







a Kernel 


BY 

GEORGE ALFRED TOWNS EN I 

'“GATH” 




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TO 


JUDGE GEORGE P. FISHER 

OF DELAWARE 
AND 

HON. JOHN A. J. CRESWELL 

OF MARYLAND 
LOVERS OF OLD TIMES 
WELCOMERS OF THE NEW ERA 


“ Friends ! trust not the heart of that man for whom Old Clothes 
are not venerable.” — Carlyle : Sartor Resartus 






ENTAILED 



OR 

ITJ Y CANNON’S Tib LI S 


21 tlomancc 

i 

GEORGE ALFRED TOWNS EK 

“GATH’' 






HARPER & BROTHERS, 


In the ' office of the Librarian of Concress, at Washing* 





INTRODUCTION. 


Once the author awoke to a painful reflection that he 
, new no place well, though his occupation had taken him 
> many, and that, after twenty-five years of describing 
i >calities and society, he would be identified with none. 

“ Where shall I begin to rove within confines?” he 
a sked, feeling the vacant spaces in his nature : the want 
. f all those birds, forest . trees, household habits, weeds, 
istincts of the brooks, and tints and tones of the local 
Decies which lie in some neighborhood’s compass, and 
omplete the pastoral mind. 

Numerous districts rose up and contended together, 
ach attractive from some striking scene, or bold con- 
*ast, or lovely face; and wiser policy might have led 
is inclinations to one of these, redundant, perhaps, in 
ealth or literary appreciation ; yet the heart began to 
; irn, as in first love, or vagrancy almost as sweet, to the 
ttle, lowly region where his short childhood was lived, 
nd where the unknown generations of his people dark- 
ned the sand — the peninsula between the Chesapeake 
nd the Delaware. 

Far down this peninsula lies the old town of Snow Hill, 
in the border of Virginia ; there the pilgrim entered the 
;ourt-house, and asked to see an early book of wills, and 
n it he turned to the name of a maternal ancestor, of 
vhom grand tales had been told him by an aged rela- 
ive. His breath was almost taken by finding the fob 
owing provisions, dated February 12, 1800 : 

“ I give and bequeath to my son, Ralph Milbourn, my 


INTRODUCTION. 


viii 

BEST HAT, TO HIM AND HIS ASSIGNEES FOREVER, and no 
more of my estate. 

“ I give to Thomas Milbourn my small iron kettle, my 
brandy still, all my hand-irons, my pot-rack, and fifteen 
pounds bond that he gave to my daughter, Grace Mil- 
bourn.” 

The next day a doctor took the author on his rounds 
through “ the Forest,” as a neighboring tract was almost 
too invidiously called, and through a deserted iron-fur- 
nace village almost of the date of these wills. 

Everywhere he went the Entailed Hat seemed, to the 
stranger in the land of his forefathers, to appear in the 
vistas, as if some odd, reverend, avoided being was wear- 
ing it down the defiles of time. Now like Hester Prynne 
wearing her Scarlet Letter, and now like Gaston in his 
Iron Mask, this being took both sexes and different char- 
acters, as the author weighed the probabilities of its ex- 
istence. At last he began to know it, and started to por- 
tray it in a little tale. 

The story broke from its confines as his own family 
generation had broken from that forest, and sought a 
larger hemisphere ; yet, wherever the mystic Hat pro- 
ceeded, his truant fancy had also been led by his moth- 
er’s hand. 

Often had she told him of old Patty Cannon and her 
kidnapper’s den, and her death in the jail of his native 
town. He found the legend of that dreaded woman had 
strengthened instead of having faded with time, and her 
haunts preserved, and eye-witnesses of her deeds to bt 
still living. 

Hence, this romance has much local truth in it, and ii 
not only the narration of an episode, but the story of a 
large region comprehending three state jurisdictions, an< 
also of that period when modern life arose upon the ruin 
of old colonial caste. 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER • p AG H 

I. Two Hat Wearers i 

II. Judge and Daughter 6 

III. The Foresters 15 

IV. Discovery of the Heirloom 19 

V. The Bog-ore Tract 25 

VI. The Custises Ruined 32 

VII. Jack-o’-lantern Iron 40 

VIII. The Hat Finds a Rack 45 

IX. Ha! ha! the Wooing on’t 69 

X. Master in the Kitchen 83 

XI. Dying Pride 89 

XII. Princess Anne Folks 100 

XIII. Shadow of the Tile 121 

XIV. Meshach’s Home 129 

XV. The Kidnapper 154 

XVI. Bell-crown Man 164 

XVII. Sabbath and Canoe 179 

XVIII. Under an Old Bonnet 192 

XIX. The Dusky Levels 210 

XX. Caste without Tone 218 

XXI. Long Separations 239 

XXII. Nanticoke People 261 

XXIII. Twiford’s Island 269 


X 


CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER PAGE 

XXIV. Old Chimneys 285 

XXV. Patty Cannon’s 298 

XXVI. Van Dorn 318 

XXVII. Cannon’s Ferry. 335 

XXVIII. Pacification 357 

XXIX. Beginning of the Raid 360 

XXX. Africa 365 

XXXI. Peach Blush 373 

XXXII. Garter-snakes 391 

XXXIII. Honeymoon 405 

XXXIV. The Ordeal 41 1 

XXXV. Cowgill House 424 

XXXVI. Two Whigs 433 

XXXVII. Spirits of the Past 441 

XXXVIII. Virgie’s Flight 456 

XXXIX. Virgie’s Flight — continued 468 

XL. Hulda Beleaguered 486 

XLI. Aunt Patty’s Last Trick 496 

XLII. Beaks 510 

XLIII. Pleasure Drained 515 

XLIV. The Death of Patty Cannon 524 

XLV. The Judge Remarried 542 

XLVI. The Curse of the Hat 554 

XLVII. Failure and Restitution 558 


A picture of Joe Johnson’s Kidnapper’s Tavern, as it stood in the 
year 1883 is given on the title-page. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


Chapter I. 

TWO HAT WEARERS. 

Princess Anne, as its royal name implies, is an old 
seat of justice, and gentle-minded town on the Eastern 
Shore. The ancient county of Somerset having been 
divided many years before the revolutionary war, and its 
courts separated, the original court-house faded from the 
world, and the forest pines have concealed its site. Two 
new towns arose, and flourish yet, around the original 
records gathered into their plain brick offices, and he 
would be a forgetful visitor in Princess Anne who would 
not say it had the better society. He would get assur- 
ances of this from “ the best people ” living there ; and 
yet more solemn assurances from the two venerable 
churches, Presbyterian and Episcopalian, whose grave- 
stones, upright or recumbent, or in family’ rows, say, in 
epitaphs Latinized, poetical, or pious, “ We belonged to 
the society of Princess Anne.” That, at least, is the im- 
pression left on the visitor as he wanders amid their 
myrtle and creeper, or receives, on the wide, loamy 
streets, the bows of the lawyers and their clients. 

There were but two eccentric men living in Princess 
Anne in the early half of our century, and both of them 
were identified by their hats. 

The first was Jack Wonnell, a poor fellow of some re- 
mote origin who had once attended an auction, and bought 

i 


2 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


a quarter gross of beaver hats. Although that happened 
years before our story opens, and the fashions had changed, 
Jack produced a new hat from the stock no oftener than 
when he had well worn its predecessor, and, at the rate 
of two hats a year, was very slowly extinguishing the 
store. Like most people who frequent auctions, he was 
not provident, except in hats, and presented a startling 
appearance in his patched and shrunken raiment when 
he mounted a bright, new tile, and took to the sidewalk. 
His name had become, in all grades of society, “ Bell- 
crown.” 

The other eccentric citizen was the subject of a real 
mystery, and even more burlesque. He wore a hat, 
apparently more than a century old, of a tall, steeple 
crown, and stiff, wavy brim, and nearly twice as high as 
the cylinders or high hats of these days. It had been 
rubbed and re-covered and cleaned and straightened, 
until its grotesque appearance was infinitely increased. 
If the wearer had walked out of the court of King James 
I. directly into our times and presence, he could not have 
produced a more singular effect. He did not wear this 
hat on every occasion, nor every day, but always on Sab- 
baths and holidays, on funeral or corporate celebrations, 
on certain English church days, and whenever he wore 
the remainder of his extra suit, which was likewise of the 
genteel - shabby kind, and terminated by greenish gai- 
ters, nearly the counterpart, in color, of the hat. To 
daily business he wore a cheap, common broadbrim, but 
sometimes, for several days, on freak or unknown method, 
he wore this steeple hat, and strangers in the place gen- 
erally got an opportunity to see it. 

Meshach Milburn, or “ Steeple-top,” was a penurious, 
grasping, hardly social man of neighborhood origin, but 
of a family generally unsuccessful and undistinguished, 
which had been said to be dying out for so many years 
that it seemed to be always a remnant, yet never quite 


TWO HAT WEARERS. 


3 


gone. He alone of the Milburns had lifted himself out 
of the forest region of Somerset, and settled in the town, 
and, by silence, frugality, hard bargaining, and, finally, by 
money-lending, had become a person of unknown means 
— himself almost unknown. He was, ostensibly, a mer- 
chant or storekeeper, and did deal in various kinds of 
things, keeping no clerk or attendant but a negro named 
Samson, who knew as little about his mind and affections 
as the rest of the town. Samson’s business was to clean 
and produce the mysterious hat, which he knew to be re- 
quired every time he saw his master shave. 

As soon as the lather-cup and hone were agitated, 
Samson, without inquiry, went into a big green chest in 
the bedroom over the old wooden store, and drew out of 
a leather hat-box the steeple-crown, where Meshach Mil- 
burn himself always sacredly replaced it. Then “ Sam- 
son Hat,” as the boys called him, exercised his brush 
vigorously, and put the queer old head-gear in as formal 
shape as possible, and he silently attended to its reha- 
bilitation through the medium of the village hatter, never 
leaving the shop until the tile had been repaired, and suf- 
fering none whatever to handle it except the mechanic. 
In addition to this, Samson cooked his master’s food, 
and performed rough work around the store, but had no 
other known qualification for a confidential servant ex- 
cept his bodily power. 

He was now old, probably sixty, but still a most for- 
midable pugilist ; and he had caught, running afoot, the 
last wild deer in the county. Though not a drinking 
man, Samson Hat never let a year pass without having 
a personal battle with some young, willing, and powerful 
negro. His physical and mental system seemed to re- 
quire some such periodical indulgence, and he measured 
every negro who came to town solely in the light of his 
prowess. At the appearance of some Herculean or clean- 
chested athlete, Samson’s eye would, kindie, his smile 


4 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


start up, and his friendly salutation would be : “ You’re 
a good man ! ’Most as good as me !” He was never 
whipped, rumor said, but by an inoffensive black class- 
leader whom he challenged and compelled to fight. 

“ Befo’ God, man, I never see you befo’ ! I’se jined 
de church ! I kint fight ! I never didn’t do it !” 

“ Can’t help it, brother !” answered Samson. “ You’re 
too good a man to go froo Somerset County. Square off 
or you’ll ketch it !” 

“ Den if I must I must ! de Lord forgive me !” and 
after a tremendous battle the class-leader came off near- 
ly conqueror. 

Whenever Samson indulged his gladiatorial propensi- 
ties he disappeared into the forest whence he came, and 
being a free man of mental independence equal to his 
nerve, he merely waited in his lonely cabin until Meshach 
Milburn sent him word to return. Then silently the 
old negro resumed his place, looked contrition, took the 
few bitter, overbearing words of his master silently, and 
brushed the ancient hat. 

Meshach kept him respectably dressed, but paid him 
no wages; the negro had what he wanted, but wanted lit- 
tle; on more than one occasion the court had imposed 
penalties on Samson’s breaches of the peace, and he lay 
in jail, unsolicitous and proud, until Meshach Milburn 
paid the fine, which he did grudgingly ; for money was Me- 
shach’s sole pursuit, and he spent nothing upon himself. 

Without a vice, it appeared that Meshach Milburn had 
not an emotion, hardly a virtue. He had neither pity 
nor curiosity, visitors nor friends, professions nor apolo- 
gies. Two or three times he had been summoned on a 
jury, when he put on his best suit and his steeple-crown, 
and formally went through his task. He attended the 
Episcopal worship every Sunday and great holiday, wear- 
ing inevitably the ancient tile, which often of itself drew 
audience more than the sermon. He gave a very small 


TWO HAT WEARERS. 


5 

sum of money and took a cheap pew, and read from his 
prayer-book many admonitions he did not follow. 

He was not litigious, but there was no evading the per- 
fectness of his contracts. His searching and large hazel 
eyes, almost proud and quite unkindly, and his Indian- 
like hair, were the leading elements of a face not large, 
but appearing so, as if the buried will of some long frivo- 
lous family had been restored and concentrated in this 
man and had given a bilious power to his brows and 
jaws and glances. 

His eccentricity had no apparent harmony with any- 
* thing else nor any especial sensibility about it. The 
boys hooted his hat, and the little girls often joined in, 
crying “ Steeple-top ! He’s got it on ! Meshach’s loose !” 
But he paid no attention to anybody, until once, at court 
time, some carousing fellows hired Jack Wonnell to walk 
up to Meshach Milburn and ask to swap a new bell- 
crown for the old decrepit steeple-top. Looking at Won- 
nell sternly in the face, Meshach hissed, “You miserable 
vagrant ! Nature meant you to go bareheaded. Beware 
when you speak to me again !” 

“I was afraid of him,” said Jack Wonnell, afterwards. 
“ He seemed to have a loaded pistol in each eye.” 

No other incident, beyond indiscriminate ridicule, was 
recorded of this hat, except once, when a group of little 
children in front of Judge Custis’s house began to whis- 
per and titter, and one, bolder than the rest, the Judge’s 
daughter, gravely walked up to the unsocial man ; it was 
the first of May, and he was in his best suit : 

“ Sir,” she said, “ may I put a rose in your old hat ?” 

The harsh man looked down at the little queenly child, 
standing straight and slender, with an expression on her 
face of composure and courtesy. Then he looked up and 
over the Judge’s residence to see if any mischievous or 
presuming person had prompted this act. No one was 
in sight, and the other children had run away. 


6 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Why do you offer me a flower ?” he said, but with no 
tenderness. 

“ Because I thought such a very old hat might improve 
with a rose.” 

He hesitated a minute. The little girl, as if well-born, 
received his strong stare steadily. He took off the vener- 
able old head-gear, and put it in the pretty maid’s hand. 
She fixed a white rose to it, and then he placed the hat 
and rose again on his head and took a small piece of 
gold from his pocket. 

“ Will you take this ?” 

“ My father will not let me, sir !” 

Meshach Milburn replaced the coin and said nothing 
else, but walked down the streets, amid more than the 
usual simpering, and the weather-beaten door of the lit- 
tle rickety storehouse closed behind him. 


Chapter II. 

JUDGE AND DAUGHTER. 

Judge Custis was the most important man in the 
county. He belonged to the oldest colonial family of 
distinction, the Custises of Northampton, whose fortune, 
beginning with King Charles II. and his tavern credits 
in Rotterdam, ended in endowing Colonel George Wash- 
ington with a widow’s mite. The Judge at Princess Anne 
was the most handsome man, the father of the finest 
family of sons and daughters, the best in estate, most 
various in knowledge, and the most convivial of Custises. 

In that region of the Eastern Shore there is so little 
diversity of productions, the ocean and the loam alone 
contributing to man, that Judge Custis had an exagger- 
ated reputation as a mineralogist. 

He had begun to manufacture iron out of the bog ores 


JUDGE AND DAUGHTER. 


7 


found in the swamps and hummocks of a neighboring 
district, and, with the tastes of a landholding and slave- 
holding family, had erected around his furnace a consid- 
erable town, his own residence as proprietor conspicuous 
in the midst. There he spent a large part of the time, 
and not always in the company of his family, entertain- 
ing friends from the distant cities, enjoying the luxuries 
of terrapin, duck, and wines, and, as rumor said in the 
forest, all the pleasures of a Russian or German noble- 
man on a secluded estate. 

He could lie down on the ground with the barefooted 
foresters, equal and familiar with them, and carry off' 
their suffrages for the State Senate or the Assembly. In 
Princess Anne he was more discriminating, rising in that 
society to his family stature, and surrounded by alliances 
which demanded what is called “ bearing.” In short, he 
was the head of the community, and his wealth, originally 
considerable, had been augmented by marriage, while his 
credit extended to Philadelphia and Baltimore. 

Not long after the occurrence of his young daughter, 
Vesta, placing the rose in Meshach Milburn’s mysteri- 
ous hat, Judge Custis said to his lady at the breakfast- 
table : 

“ That man has been allowed to shut himself in, like a 
dog, too long. He owes something to this community. 
I’ll go down to his kennel, under pretence of wanting a 
loan — and I do need some money for the furnace !•” 

He took his cane after breakfast and passed out of his 
large mansion, and down the sidewalk of the level street. 
There were, as usually, some negroes around Milburn’s 
small, weather-stained store, and Samson Hat, among 
them, shook hands with the Judge, not a particle dis- 
turbed at the latter’s condescension. 

“Judge,” said Samson, looking that large, portly gen- 
tleman over, “ you’se a good man yet. But de flesh is a 
little soft in yo’ muscle, Judge.” 


8 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Ah ! Samson,” answered Custis, “ there’s one old fel- 
low that is wrastling you.” 

“Time?” said the negro; “we can’t fight him, sho ! 
Dat’s a fack ! But I’m good as any man in Somerset now.” 

“ Except my daughter’s boy, the class-leader from Tal- 
bot.” 

“ Is dat boy in yo’ family,” exclaimed Samson, kindling 
up. “I’ll walk dar if he’ll give me another throw.” 

The Judge passed into the wide-open door of Meshach 
Milburn’s store. A few negroes and poor whites were at 
the counter, and Meshach was measuring whiskey out to 
them by the cheap dram in exchange for coonskins and 
eggs. He looked up, just a trifle surprised at the princi- 
pal man’s advent, and merely said, without nodding: 

“ ’Morning !” 

Judge Custis never flinched from anybody, but his in- 
telligence recognized in Meshach’s eyes a kind of nature 
he had not yet met, though he was of universal acquaint- 
ance. It was not hostility, nor welcome, nor indiffer- 
ence. It was not exactly spirit. As nearly as the Judge 
could formulate it, the expression was habitual self-reli- 
ance, and if not habitual suspicion, the feeling most near 
it, which comes from conscious unpopularity. 

“Mr. Milburn,” said Judge Custis, “ when you are at 
leisure let me have a few words with you.” 

The storekeeper turned to the poor folks in his little 
area and remarked to them bluntly : 

“You can come back in ten minutes.” 

They all went out without further command. Milburn 
closed the door. The Judge moved a chair and sat 
down. 

“Milburn,” he said, dropping the formal “mister,” 
“ they tell me you lend money, and that you charge well 
for it. I am a borrower sometimes, and I believe in 
keeping interest at home in our own community. Will 
you discount my note at legal interest ?” 


JUDGE AND DAUGHTER. 


9 


“ Never/’ replied Meshach. 

“Then,” said the Judge, smiling, “ you’ll put me to 
some inconvenience.” 

“ That’s more than legal interest,” answered Milburn, 
sturdily. “You’ll pay the legal interest where you go, 
and the inconvenience of going will cost something too. 
If you add your expenses as liberally as you incur them 
when you go to Baltimore, to legal interest, you are al- 
ways paying a good shave.” 

“Where you have risks,” suggested the Judge, “there 
is some reason for a heavy discount, but my property will 
enrich this county and all the land you hold mortgages 
on.” 

“ Bog ore !” muttered the money-lender. “ I never lent 
money on that kind of risk. I must read upon it ! They 
say manufacturing requires mechanical talent. How 
much do you want ?” 

“Three thousand.” 

“ Secured upon the furnace ?” 

“Yes.” 

Meshach computed on a piece of paper, and the Judge, 
with easy curiosity, studied his singular face and figure. 

He was rather short and chunky, not weighing more 
than one hundred and thirty pounds, with long, fine fingers 
of such tracery and separate action that every finger 
seemed to have a mind and function of its own. Look- 
ing at his hands only, one would have said : “ There is 
here a pianist, a penman, a woman of definite skill, or a 
man of peculiar delicacy.” All the fingers were well pro- 
duced, as if the hand instead of the face was meant to be 
the mind’s exponent and reveal its portrait there. 

Yet the face of Meshach Milburn, if more repellent, 
was uncommon. 

The effects of one long diet and one climate, invariable, 
from generation to generation, and both low and unin- 
vigorating, had brought to nearly aboriginal form and 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


JO 

lines his cheek-bones, hair, and resinous brown eyes. 
From the cheek-bones up he looked like an Indian, and 
expressed a stolid power and swarthiness. Below, there 
dropped a large face, in proportion, with nothing notice- 
able about it except the nose, which was so straight, 
prominent, and complete, and its nostrils so sensitive, that 
only the nose upon his face seemed to be good company 
for his hands. When he confronted one, with his head 
thrown back a little, his brown eyes staring inquiry, and 
his nose almost sentient, the effect was that of a hostile 
savage just burst from the woods. 

That was his condition indeed. 

“ Look at him in the eyes,” said the town-bred, “ he’s 
all forester !” 

“ But look at his hand,” added some few observant 
ones. 

Ah ! who had ever shaken that hand ? 

It was now extended to the Judge and he took from 
its womanly fingers the terms of the loan. Judge Custis 
was surprised at the moderation of Meshach, and he 
looked up cheerfully into that ever sentinel face on which 
might have been printed “ qui vive ?” 

“ It’s not the goodness of the security,” said Meshach, 
“ I make it low to you, socially !” 

The Custis pride started with a flush to the Judge’s 
eyes, to have this ostracised and hooted Shylock inti- 
mate that their relations could be more than a prince’s 
to a pawnbroker. But the Judge was a politician, with 
an adaptable mind and address. 

“ Speaking of social things, Milburn,” he said, care- 
lessly, “ our town is not so large that we don’t all see 
each other sometimes. Why do you wear that forlorn, 
unsightly hat ?” 

“ Why do you wear the name Custis?” 

“ Oh, I inherited that !” 

“ And I inherited my hat.” 


JUDGE AND DAUGHTER. 


IX 


There was a pause for a minute, but before the Judge 
could tell whether it was an angry or an awkward pause, 
the storekeeper said : 

“Judge Custis, I concede that you are the best bred 
man in Princess Anne. Where did you get authority to 
question another person about any decent article of his 
attire ?” 

“I stand corrected, Milburn,” said the Judge. “Good 
feeling for you more than curiosity made me suggest it. 
And I may also remark to you, sir, that when you lend 
me money you will always do it commercially and not 
socially .” 

“Very well,” remarked Meshach Milburn, “and if I 
ever enter your door, I will then take off my hat.” 

The next morning Meshach Milburn surprised Samson 
Hat by saying : “ Boy, when you have another fight and 
make yourself a barbarian again, remember to bring 
back, from Nassawongo furnace, about a peck of the bog 
ores !” 

The years moved on without much change in princess 
Anne. The little Manokin river brought up oysters from 
the bay, and carried off the corn and produce. The great 
brick academy at neighboring “ Lower Trappe ” boarded 
and educated the brightest youths of the best families on 
the Peninsula ; and these perceived, as the annual sum- 
mers brought their fulness, what portion of their beauty 
remained with Vesta Custis. She was like Helen of 
Troy, a subject of homage and dispute in childhood, and 
became a woman, in men’s consideration, almost imper- 
ceptibly. Sent to Baltimore to be educated, her return 
was followed by suitors — not youthful admirers only; but 
mature ones — and the young men of the Peninsula re- 
marked with chagrin : “ None of us have a chance ! 
Some great city nabob will get her.” 


12 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


But the academy boys and visitors, and the towns- 
people, had one common opportunity to see her and to 
hear her — when she sang, every Sabbath and church 
day, in the Episcopal church. 

Her voice was the natural expression of her beauty — 
sweet, powerful, free, and easily trained. A divine bird 
seemed hidden in the old church when this noble yet 
tender voice broke forth; but they who turned to see 
the singer who had made such Paradise, looked almost 
on Eve herself. 

She was rather slight, tall, and growing fuller slowly 
every^ year, like one in whom growth was early, yet long, 
and who would wholly mature not until near middle life. 
Her head, however, was perfection, even in girlhood, not 
les£ by its proportions than its carriage : her graceful 
figure bore it like the slender setting, holding up the 
first splendor of the peach ; a head of vital and spiritual 
beauty, where purity and luxuriance, woman and mind, 
dwelt in harmony and joy. As she seemed ever to be 
ripening, so she seemed never to have been a child, but, 
with faculties and sense clear and unintimidated, she was 
never wanting in modesty, nor accused of want of self- 
possession. Judge Custis made her his reliance and 
pride ; she never reproved his errors, nor treated them 
familiarly, but settled the household by a consent which 
all paid to her character alone. More than once she 
had appeared at the furnace mansion when the Judge’s 
long absence had awakened some jealousy or distrust : 

“ Father, please go home with me ! I want you to drive 
me back.” 

The easy, self-indulgent Judge would look a slight pro- 
test, but at the soft, spirited command ; “ Come, sir ! you 
can’t stay here any more,” dismissed his companions, and 
took his place at the head of Princess Anne society. 

Vesta was almost a brunette, with the rich colors of her 
type — eyebrows like the raven’s wing, ripe, red lips, and 


JUDGE AND DAUGHTER. 




hair whose darkness and length, released from the crown 
into which she wound it, might have spun her garments. 
Her eyes were of a steel-blue, in which the lights had the 
effect of black. She was dark with sky breaking through, 
like the rich dusk and twilights over the Chesapeake. 

People wondered that, with such beauty, ease, and ac- 
complishments she was not proud ; but her pride was 
too ethereal to be seen. It was not the vain conscious- 
ness of gifts and endowments, but the serene sense of 
worthiness, of unimpaired health, honor, and descent, 
which made her kind and thoughtful to a degree only 
less than piety. Grateful for her social rank and parent- 
age, she adorned but did not forget them. The suitors 
who came for her were weighed in this scale of perfect 
desert — to be sons of such parents and associates of her 
married sisters and sisters-in-law. Not one had survived 
the test, yet none knew where he failed. 

“Vesta is too good for any of them,” exclaimed the 
Judge, on more than one occasion. “When I get the 
furnace in such shape that it will run itself I will take 
my daughter to Europe and give her a musical education.” 

In truth, the Judge had expectations of his daughter; 
for the reputation he had attained as a manufacturer was 
not without its drawbacks. He maintained two estab- 
lishments ; he supported a large body of laborers and de- 
pendents, some of whom he had brought from distant 
places under contract ; the experiment in which he had 
embarked was still an experiment, and he was subject to 
the knowledge and judgment of his manager, being him- 
self rather the patron than the manufacturer at the works. 
Many days, when he was supposed to be testing the per- 
centage and mixture of his ores, he was gunning off on 
the ocean bars, crabbing on Whollop’s Beach, or hunting 
up questionable company among the forest girls, or around 
the oystermen’s or wrecker’s cabins. He had plenty of 
property and family endorsers, however, and seldom failed 


14 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


to have a satisfactory interview with Meshach Milburn, 
who was now assisting him, at least once a quarter, to 
keep both principal and interest at home. 

The Judge had grown thicker with Meshach, but the 
storekeeper merely listened and assented, and took no 
pains to incur another criticism on his motives. Meshach 
wore his great hat, as ever, to church and on festive days, 
and it was still derided, and held to be the town wonder. 
Vesta Custis often saw the odd little man come into 
church while she was singing, and she fancied that his 
large, coarse ears were turned to receive the music she 
was making, and she faintly remembered that once she 
had held in her hands that wonderful hat with its cop- 
per buckle in the band, and stiff, wide brim, flowing in a 
wave. More than that she knew nothing, except that 
the wearer was an humble-born, grasping creature — a for- 
ester without social propensities, or, indeed, any human 
attachments. The negro who abode under his roof was 
beloved, compared to the sordid master, and all testimony 
concurred that Meshach Milburn deserved neither com- 
miseration, friendship, nor recognition. Her father, how- 
ever, indulgent in all things, said the money-lender had a 
good mind, and was no serf. 

Milburn had ceased to deal with negroes or dispense 
drams. His wealth was now known to be more than 
considerable. He had ceased, also, to lend money on 
the surrounding farms, and rumors came across the bay 
that he was a holder of stocks and mortgages on the 
Western Shore, and in Baltimore and Pennsylvania. The 
little town of Princess Anne was full of speculations about 
him, and even his age was uncertain; Jack Wonnell had 
measured it by hats. Said Jack: 

“ I bought my bell-crowns the year ole Milburn’s daddy 
and mammy died. They died of the bilious out yer in 
Nassawongo, within a few days of each other. Now, I 
wear two bell-crowns a year. I come out every Fourth 


THE FORESTERS. 


15 


of July and Christmas. ’Tother clay I counted what was 
left, and I reckoned that Meshach couldn’t be forty-five 
at the wust.” 

Vesta Custis was only twenty years old when the 
townsfolk thought she must be twenty-five, so long had 
she been the beauty of Somerset. Her mother had al- 
ways looked with apprehension on the possible time 
when her daughter would marry and leave her; forjudge 
Custis had long ceased to have the full confidence of his 
lady, whose fortune he had embarked without return on 
ventures still in doubt, and he always waived the sub- 
ject when it was broached, or remarked that no loss 
was possible in his hands while Mrs. Custis lived. 


Chapter III. 

THE FORESTERS. 

One Saturday afternoon in October Meshach Milburn 
drew out his razor, cup, and hone, and prepared to shave, 
albeit his beard was never more than harmless down. 
By a sort of capillary attraction Samson Hat divined his 
purpose, and, opening the big green chest, brought out 
the mysterious hat. 

“ Put it down !” commanded the money-lender. “ Go 
out and hire me a carriage with two horses — two horses, 
do you mind !” 

Samson dropped the hat in wonderment. 

“Make yourself decent,” added Meshach; “I want 
you to drive. Go with me, and keep with me : do you 
understand?” 

“ Yes, marster.” 

When the negro departed, Meshach himself took up 
the tall, green, buckled hat, with the stiff, broad, piratical 
brim. He looked it over long and hard. 


i6 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Vanity, vanity !” he murmured, “ vanity and habit ! I 
dare not disown thee now, because they give thee ridicule, 
and without thee they would give me nothing but hate !” 

The people around the tavern and court-house saw, 
with surprise too great for jeering, the note-shaver go 
past in a carriage, driven by his negro, and with two 
horses! Jack Wonnell took off his shining beaver to 
cheer. As the phenomenal team receded, the old cry 
ran, however, down the stilly street : “ Steeple-top ! He’s 
got it on ! Meshach’s loose !” 

The carriage proceeded out the forest road, and soon 
entered upon the sandy, pine-slashed region called Hard- 
scrabble, or Hardship. 

Here the roads were sandy as the hummocks and hills 
in the rear of a sea beach, and the low, lean pines cov- 
ered the swells and ridges, while in occasional level 
basins, where the stiff clay was exposed, some forester’s 
unpainted hut sat black and smoking on the slope, with- 
out a window-pane, an ornament, or anything to relieve 
life from its monotony and isolation. 

But where the rills ran off to the continuous swamps 
the leafage started up in splendrous versatility. The 
maple stood revealed in all its fair, light harmonies. The 
magnolia drooped its ivory tassels, and scented the forest 
with perfume. The kalmia and the alder gave under- 
growth and brilliancy to the foliage. Hoary and green 
with precipitate old age, the cypress-trees stood in moist- 
ure, and drooped their venerable beards from angular 
branches, the bald cypress overhanging its evergreen 
kinsman, and looking down upon the swamp-woods in 
autumn, like some hermit artist on the rich pigments on 
his palette. 

But nothing looked so noble as the sweet gum, which 
rose like a giant plume of yellow and orange, a chief in 
joyous finery, where the cypress was only a faded phi- 
losopher. 


THE FORESTERS. 


17 


Beside such a tall gum-tree Samson Hat reined in, 
where a well-spring shone at the bottom of a hollow 
cypress. He borrowed a bucket from the hut across the 
road, and watered the horses. 

“ Marster,” ventured the negro, “ dey say your gran’- 
daddy sot dis spring.” 

“Yes,” said Milburn, “and built the cabin. Yonder 
he lies, on the knoll by that stump, up in the field : he 
and more of our wasted race.” 

“ And yon woman is a Milburn,” added the negro, so- 
cially. “ I know her by de hands.” 

The barefoot woman living in the cabin — one room 
and a loft, and the floor but a few inches above the 
ground — cried out, impudently : 

“ If I could have two horses I’d buy a better hat !” 

Milburn did not answer, but marked the poor, small 
corn ears ungathered on the fodderless stalks, the shrubs 
of peach-trees, of which the largest grew on his ances- 
tors’ graves, the little cart for one horse or ox, which was 
at once family carriage and farm wagon, and the few 
pigs and chickens of stunted breeds around the woman’s 
feet. 

“ Drive on, boy,” he exclaimed ; “ the worst of all is 
that these people are happy !” 

“ Dat’s a fack, marster,” laughed Samson Hat. “ Dey 
wouldn’t speak to you in Princess Anne. Dey think ev- 
erybody’s proud and rich dar.” 

“Here the sea once dashed its billows on a bar,” 
said Meshach Milburn, reflectively. “ That geology book 
relates it! From the North the hummocks recede in 
waves, where successive beaches were formed as the sea 
slowly retreated. Hardly deeper than a human grave 
they strike water, below the sand and gravel. Below the 
water they drink is nothing but black mud, made of 
coarse, decayed grass. No lime is in the soil. Not a 
mineral exists in all this low, wave-made peninsula, where 
2 


i8 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


my people were shipwrecked — except the wonderful bog 
ores.” 

The negro’s genial, wondering nature broke out with 
comfortable assurance. 

“ Dat must be in de Bible,” he said. “ Marster, de 
Milburns been heah so long, dey must hab got ship- 
wrecked wid ole Noah !” 

“ All families are shipwrecked,” absently replied Me- 
shach, “ who cast their lot upon an unrewarding land, 
and growing poorer, darker, down, from generation to 
generation, can never leave it, and, at last, can never de- 
sire to go.” 

“ Marster, dar is one got to go some ob dese days. It’s 
me — pore ole Samson !” 

“ Ha ! has some one set you on to demand your 
wages ?” 

“ No, marster, I am old. It’s you dat I’m troubled 
about ! Dar’s none to mend for you, cook for you, cure 
yo’ sickness, or lay you in de grave.” 

No more was said until they passed the settled part 
of the forest and entered one of the many straight aisles 
of sky and sand among the pines, which had been opened 
on the great furnace tract of Judge Custis. He had 
here several thousand acres, and for miles the roadways 
were cleft towards the horizon. The moon rose behind 
them as they entered the furnace village, and they saw 
the lights twinkle through the open doors of many cot- 
tages and the furnace flames dart over the forbidding 
mill-pond, where in the depths grew the iron ore, like a 
vegetable creation, and above the surface, on splayed and 
conical mud-washed roots, the hundreds of strong cy- 
presses towered from the water. Between the steep 
banks of dark-colored pines, taller than the forest growth, 
this furnace lake lay black and white and burning red as 
the shadows, or moonrise, or flames struck upon it, and 
the stained water foamed through the breast or dam 


DISCOVERY OF THE HEIRLOOM. 


19 


where the ancient road crossed between pines, cypresses 
and gum-trees of commanding stature. 

Tawny, slimy, chilly, and solemn, the pond repeated the 
forms of the groves it submerged; the shaggy shadows 
added depth and dread to the effect ; some strange birds 
hooted as they dipped their wings in the surface, and, fly- 
ing upward, seemed also sinking down. As Meshach 
felt the chill of that pond he drew down his hat and 
buttoned up his coat. 

“ The earliest fools who turned up the bog ores for 
wealth,” he said, “ released the miasmas which slew all 
the people roundabout. They killed all my family, but 
set me free.” 


Chapter IV. 

DISCOVERY OF THE HEIRLOOM. 

Judge Custis was in his bedroom, in the second 
story of the large, inn-like mansion at the middle of the 
village, and he was just recovering from the effects of a 
long wassail. In his peculiar nervous condition he 
started at the sound of wheels, and, drawing his curtains, 
looked out upon the long shadow of an advancing figure 
crowmed with a steeple hat. 

This human shadow strengthened and faded in the 
alternating light, until it was defined against his store- 
house, his warehouse, his cabins, and the plain, and it 
seemed also against the wall of dense forest pines. 
Then footsteps ascended the stairs. His door opened 
and Meshach Milburn, with his holiday hat on his head, 
stood on the threshold ; his eyes vigilant and bold as 
ever, and all his Indian nature to the front. 

" My God, Milburn !” exclaimed the Judge, “ odd as it 
is to see you here, I am relieved. Old Nick, I thought, 
was coming.” 


20 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“Shall I come in?” asked Milburn. 

“ Yes ; I’m sleeping off a little care and business. Let 
your man stay outside on the porch. Draw up a chair. 
It’s money, I suppose, that brings you here ?” 

The money-lender carefully put his formidable hat 
upon a table, took a distant chair, pushed his gaitered 
feet out in front, and laid a large wallet or pocket-book 
on his lap. Then, addressing his whole attention to the 
host, he appeared never to wink while he remained. 

“Judge Custis,” he said, straightforwardly, “the first 
lime you came to borrow money from me, you said that 
Nassawongo furnace would enrich this county and raise 
the value of my land.” 

“ Yes, Milburn. It was a slow enterprise, but it’s com- 
ing all right. I shipped a thousand tons last year.” 

“Judge Custis,” continued the money-lender, “I told 
you, when you made the first loan, that I would investi- 
gate this ore. I did so years ago. Specimens were 
sent by me to Baltimore and tested there. Not content 
with that, I have studied the manufacture of iron for my- 
self — the society of Princess Anne not grudging me 
plenty of solitude ! — and I know that every ton of iron 
you make costs more than you get for it. The bog ore 
is easy to smelt ; but it is corrupted by phosphate of iron 
and is barely marketable.” 

The Judge was sitting with eyes wide open, and paler 
than before. 

“You have found that .out?” he whispered. “I did 
not know it myself until within this year — so help me 
God !” 

“ I knew it before I made you the second loan.” 

“ Why did you not tell me ?” 

“ Because you forbade our relations to be anything but 
commercial. I was not bound to betray my knowledge.” 

“ Why did you, then, from a commercial view, lend me 
large sums of money again and again ?” 


DISCOVERY OF THE HEIRLOOM. 21 

“ Because,” said the money-lender, coolly, “ you had 
other security. You have a daughter !” 

Judge Custis broke from the bed-covers and rushed 
upon Meshach Milburn. 

“ Heathen and devil !” he shouted, taking the money- 
lender by the throat, “do you dare to mention her as 
part of your mortgage ?” 

They struggled together until a powerful pair of hands 
pinioned the Judge, and bore him back to his bed. Sam- 
son Hat was the man. 

“Judge!” he exclaimed, gentle, but firm, “you is a 
good man, but not as good as me. Cool off, Judge !” 

“I expected this scene,” said Meshach Milburn. “It 
could not have been avoided. I was bound in conscience 
and in common-sense to make you the only proposition 
which could save you from ruin. For, Judge Custis, you 
are a ruined man !” 

Overcome with excitement and suspended stimula- 
tion, the old Judge fell back on his pillow and began to 
sob. 

“Give him brandy,” said Meshach Milburn, “here is 
the bottle ! He needs it now.” 

The wretched gentleman eagerly drank the proffered 
draught from the negro’s hands. His fury did not re- 
vive, and he covered his face with his palms and moaned 
piteously. 

“Judge Custis,” remarked Meshach Milburn, “if the 
apparent social distance between us could be lessened 
by any argument, I might make one. For the difference 
is in appearance only. The healthy flesh which gives 
you and yours stature and beauty is a matter of food 
alone. My stock has survived five generations of such 
diet as has bent the spines of the forest pigs and stunted 
the oxen. Money and family joy will give me children 
comely again. My life has been hard but pure.” 

The old Judge felt the last unconscious reflection. 


22 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“Yes,” he uttered, solemnly, “no doubt Heaven 
marked me for some such degradation as this, when I 
yielded to low propensities, and sought my pleasure and 
companions in the huts of the forest !” 

“You claim descent from the Stuart Restoration: I 
know the tale. A creditor of the two exiled royal broth- 
ers for sundry tavern loans and tipples*drew for his obli- 
gation an office in far-off Virginia. Seizures, confisca- 
tions, the slave-trade, marriages — in short, the long game 
of advantage — built up the fortunes of the Custises, un- 
til they expired in a certain Judge, whose notes of hand 
a hard man, forest-born, held over the Judge’s head on 
what seemed hard conditions, but conditions in which 
was every quality of mercy, except consideration for your 
pride.” 

The Judge made a laugh like a howl. 

“Mercy?” he exclaimed, “ you do not know what it is ! 
To ensnare my innocent daughter in the damned meshes 
of your principal and interest ! Call it malignity — the 
visitation of your unsocial wrath on man and an angel ; 
but not mercy !” 

“ Then we will call it compensation,” continued Me- 
shach Milburn : “for twenty years I have denied myself 
everything; you denied yourself nothing. Your sub- 
stance is wasted; renew it from the abundance of my 
thrift. It was not with an evil design that I made my- 
self your creditor, although, as the years have rolled on- 
ward and solitude chilled my heart, that has always pined 
for human friendship, I could not but see the kindling 
glory of your daughter’s beauty. Like the schoolboys, 
the married husbands — yes, like the slaves — I had to ad- 
mire her. Then, unknowing how deeply you were in- 
volved, I found offered to me for sale the paper you had 
negotiated in Baltimore — paper, Judge Custis, dishon- 
orably negotiated !” 

The money-lender rose and walked to the sad man’s 


DISCOVERY OF THE HEIRLOOM. 23 

bed, and held the hand, full of these notes, boldly over 
him. 

“ It was despair, Milburn !” moaned the Judge. 

“ And so was my resolution. Said I : ‘ This lofty gen- 
tleman would cheat me, his neighbor, who have suffered 
all the contumely of this good society , and on starveling 
opportunity have slowly recovered independence. Now 
he shall take my place in the forest, or I will wear my hat 
at the head of his family table.’ ” 

“A dreadful revenge!” whispered Custis, with a shud- 
der. “ Such a hat is worse than a cloven foot. In 
God’s name ! whence came that ominous hat ?” 

Milburn took up the hat and held it before the lamp- 
light, so that its shadow stood gigantic against the wall. 

“Who would think,” he said, sarcastically, “that a 
mere head-covering, elegant in its day, could make more 
hostility than an idle head? I will tell you the silly 
secret of it. When I came from the obscurity of the 
forest, sensitive, and anxious to make my way, and slowly 
gathered capital and knowledge, a person in New York 
directed a letter of inquiry to me. It told how a certain 
Milburn, a Puritan or English Commonwealth man, had 
risen to great distinction in that province, and had revo- 
lutionized its government and suffered the penalty of high- 
treason.” 

“True enough,” said Judge Custis, pouring a second 
glass of brandy ; “ Milburn and Leisler were executed 
in New York during the lifetime of the first Custis, They 
anticipated the expulsion of James II., and were entrapped 
by their provincial enemies and made political martyrs.” 

“ The inquirer,” said Meshach, “ who had obtained my 
address in the course of business, related, that after Mil- 
burn’s death his brethren and their families had sailed 
to the Chesapeake, where the Protestants had success- 
fully revolutionized for King William, and, making choice 
of poor lands, they had become obscure. He asked me 


24 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


if the court-house records made any registry of their 
wills.” 

“ Of course you found them ?” 

“Yes. It was a revelation to me, and gave me the 
honorable sense of some origin and quality. I traced my- 
self back to the earliest folios, at the close of the seven- 
teenth century.” 

“ Any property, Milburn ?” asked the Judge, voluptuous 
and reanimated again. 

“ My great-grandfather had left his son nothing but a 
Hat.” 

“Not uncommon!” exclaimed Judge Custis. “Our 
early wills contain little but legacies of wearing apparel, 
household articles, bedding, pots and kettles, and the ele- 
ments of civilization.” 

“The will on record said : ‘ I give to my eldest son , Me- 
shach Milburn , my best Hat , and no more of my estate .’ ” 

“ Ha, ha, ha !” laughed the Judge, loudly. “ Genteel to 
the last ! A hat of fashion, no doubt, made in London; 
quite too ceremonious and topgallant for these colonies. 
He left it to his eldest son, en -tiled it, we may say. Ho ! 
ho!” 

“ When my indignation was over, I took the same view 
you do, Judge Custis, that it was a bequest of dignity, 
not of burlesque; and I made some inquiries for that 
best Hat. It was a legend among my forest kin, had 
been seen by very old people, was celebrated in its 
day, and worn by my grandfather thankfully. He left it 
to my father, still a hat of reputation — ” 

“ Still en -tiled to the oldest son ! Ha, ha ! Milburn.” 

“ My father sold the hat to Charles Wilson Peale, who 
was native to our peninsula, and knew the ancient things 
existing here that would help him to form Peak’s Muse- 
um during the last century. I found the hat in that mu- 
seum, covering the mock-figure of Guy Fawkes !” 

“Conspirator’s hat; bravo!” exclaimed the Judge. 


THE BOG-ORE TRACT. 


25 

“ It had been used for the heads of George Calvert and 
Shakespeare, but in time of religious excitements was pro- 
claimed to be the true hat of Guy Fawkes. I reclaimed 
it, and brought it to Princess Anne, and in a vain mo- 
ment put it on my head and walked into the street. It 
was assailed with halloos and ribaldry.” 

“It was another Shirt of Nessus, Milburn ; it poisoned 
your life, eh ?” 

“ Perhaps so,” replied Milburn, with intensity. “ They 
say what is one man’s drink is another man’s poison. 
You will accept that hat on the head of your son-in-law, 
or no more drink out of the Custis property !” 


Chapter V. 

THE BOG-ORE TRACT. 

Resolution of character and executive power had 
been trifled away by Judge Custis. The trader had con- 
cluded their interview with a decision and fierceness that 
left paralysis upon the gentleman’s mind. He saw, in sad 
fancy, the execution served upon his furniture, the amaze- 
ment of his wife, the pallor of his daughter, the indigna- 
tion of his sons. He also shrank before the impending 
failure of his furnace and abandonment of the bog-ore 
tract, on which he had raised so much state and local 
fame ; people would say : “ Custis was a fool, and de- 
ceived himself, while old Steepletop Milburn played upon 
the Custises’ vanity, and turned them into the street.” 

“ No doubt,” thought the Judge, “ that fellow, Milburn, 
can get anything when he gets my house. The poor folks’ 
vote he may command, because he is of their class. He 
is a lender to many of the rich. Who could have sus- 
pected his intelligence? His address, too? He handled 
me as if I were a forester and he a judge. A very, very 


26 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


remarkable man !” finished Judge Custis, taking the last 
of the brandy. 

He was interrupted by the entrance of Samson Hat. 

“Where’s your master, boy?” asked the Judge. 

“ He’s gone up to de ole house, Judge, where his daddy 
and mammy died. It’s de place where I hides after my 
fights.” 

“ May the ague strike him there ! Let the bilious 
sweat from the mill-pond be strong to-night, that, like 
Judas of old, his bowels may drop out ! But, no,” con- 
tinued the irresolute man, “I have no right to hate 
him.” 

“Judge,” softly said the old negro, “ my marster is a sick 
man. He ain’t happy like you an’ me. He’s ’bitious. 
He’s lonely. Dat’s enough to spile angels. But a gooder 
man I never knowed, ’cept in de onpious sperrit. He’s 
proud as Lucifer. He’s full of hate at Princess Anne 
and all de people. Your darter may git a better man, 
not a pyorer one.” 

“Purity goes a very little way,” exclaimed the Judge, 
“ on the male side of marriage contracts. It’s always as- 
sumed, and never expected. You need not remember, 
Samson, that I expressed any anger at your master !” 

“ My whole heart, judge, is to see him happy. Hard 
as he is, dat man has power to make him loved. Your 
darter might go farder and fare wuss ! I wish her no 
harm, God knows !” 

The negro said an humble good-night, and the Judge 
lay down upon his bed to think of the dread alternatives 
of the coming week ; but, voluptuous even in despair, he 
slept before he had come to any conclusion. 

Samson Hat walked up the side of the mill-pond on a 
sandy road, divided from the water by a dense growth of 
pines. The bullfrogs and insects serenaded the forest • 
the furnace chimney smoked lurid on the midnight. At 
the distance of half a mile or more an old cabin, in decay, 


THE BOG-ORE TRACT. 


27 

stood in a sandy field near the road ; it had no door in 
the hollow doorway, no sash in the one gaping window ; 
the step was broken leading to the sill, and some of the 
weather-boarding had rotted from the skeleton. The old 
end-chimney bore it toughly up, however, and the low 
brick props under the corners stood plumb. Within lay 
a single room with open beams, a sort of cupboard stair- 
way projecting over the fireplace, and another door and 
window were in the rear. Before this fireplace sat Me- 
shach Milburn on an old chair, fairly revealed by the 
light of some of the burning weather-boarding he had 
thrown upon the hearth. On the hearth was a little heap 
of the bog iron ore and a bottle. 

“ Come in, Samson !” he called. “ Don’t think me 
turned drunkard because I am taking this whiskey. I 
drink it to keep out the malaria, and partly as a com- 
munion cup ; for to-night the barefooted ghosts who have 
drooped and withered here are with me in spirit.” 

“ Dey was all good Milburns who lived heah, marster,” 
said the negro. “ Dey had hard times, but did no sin. 
Dey shook wid chills and fevers, not wid conscience.” 

“ I shall shake with neither,” said the money-lender. 
“Go up into the loft, and sleep till you are called. I 
want the horses early for Princess Anne 1” 

The negro obeyed without remark, and disappeared 
behind the cupboard-like door. Milburn sat before the 
fire, and looked into it long, while a procession of thoughts 
and phantoms passed before it. 

He saw a poor family of independent Puritans setting 
sail at different dates from English seaports. Some were 
indentured servants, hoping for a career; others were 
avoiding the civil wars ; others were small political male- 
factors, noisy against the oppressions of their hero, Crom- 
well, and conspirators against his power ; and, thrown by 
him in English jails, were only delivered to be sold into 
slavery, driven through the streets of market-towns, placed 


28 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


on troop-ships between the decks, among the horses, and 
set up at auction in Barbadoes, like the blacks ; whence 
they in time continued onward westward. One, the fort- 
unate possessor of some competence, sailed his own ship 
across the Atlantic, and delivered up to Massachusetts 
her governor and gentry. Another, incapable of being 
suppressed, though a servant, seized the destinies of an 
aristocratic colony, and held them for a while, until accu- 
mulating enemies bore him down, and wedlock and the 
gibbet followed close together. Poverty would not relin- 
quish its gripe upon the race ; they struggled up like clods 
upon the ploughshare, and fell back again into the furrow. 

As Meshach Milburn thought of these things he took 
up a portion of the bog ore from the hearth. 

“ Here is iron,” he said, thoughtfully, “ true iron, which 
makes the blood red, moulds into infinite forms, nails 
houses together, binds wheels, and casts into cannon and 
ball. But this iron ran into a bog, formed low combina- 
tions, and had no other mould than twigs and leaves af- 
forded. Its volcanic origin was forgotten when it ran 
with sand and gravel away from the mountain vein and 
upland ore along the low, alluvial bar, till, like an oyster, 
the iron is dredged from the stagnant pool, impure, ineffi- 
cacious, corrupted. So is it with man, whose magnetic 
spirit follows the dull declivity to the barren sandbars of 
the world, and lodges there. I am of the bog ores ; but 
that exists which will flux with me, clean me of rust, and 
transmit my better quality to posterity. O, youth, beauty, 
and station — lovely Vesta! for thee I will be iron !” 

Milburn looked around the single room inquiringly. 
He placed his finger upon the crevices in the weather- 
boarding ; he opened the little closet below the stairs, and 
a weasel dashed out and shot through the door ; he as- 
cended the steep, short stairs, and with a torch examined 
the black shingles, but nothing was there except a litter 
of young owls, whose parents had gone poaching. Then, 


THE BOG-ORE TRACT. 


29 


returning, he searched on every open beam and rotting 
board, as if for writing. 

“ They could not write !” he thought. “ Nothing is left 
to me, not even a sign, down a century and a half, to tell 
that I had parents !” 

As he spoke he felt an object move behind him, and, 
looking back, the shadow of the Entailed Hat was dancing 
on the wall. As he threw his head back, so did it ; as he 
retired from it, the hat enlarged, until the little room could 
hardly hold its shadow. Retiring again, he lifted it from 
his head with bitter courtesy, and the shadow did the 
same. The man and the shadow looked each at a peaked 
hat and stroked it. 

“ This is everything,” exclaimed Milburn. “ The hun- 
dred humble heads are at rest in the sand; one grave- 
stone would mock them all. But once the family brain 
expanded to a hat, and that survived the race. I am the 
Quaker who respects his hat, the Cardinal who is crowned 
with it ; yes, and the dunce who must wear it in his cor- 
ner !” 

Then the picture of his parents arose upon his sight : 
a cheerful father, with two or three old slaves, ploughing in 
the deep sand, to drop some shrivelled grains of corn, or 
tinkering a disordered mill-wheel that moved a black- 
smith’s saw. Ever full of confidence in nothing which 
could increase, credulous and sanguine, tender and labo- 
rious, Milburn’s sire nursed his forest patches as if they 
were presently to be rich plantations, and was ever “pric- 
ing” negroes, mules, tools, and implements, in expecta- 
tion of buying them. Nothing could diminish his confi- 
dence but disease and old age. He heard of the great 
“improvement” on the Furnace tract, and took his obe- 
dient wife and brood there. As the laborers pulled out 
the tussocks and roots, encrusted with iron, from the 
swamp and creek, fever and ague came forth and smote 
them both. 


30 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


How wretched that scene when, almost too haggard 
to move, father and mother, in this one bare room where 
Meshach sat, groaning amid their many offspring, saw 
death with weakness creep upon each other — death with- 
out priest or doctor, without residue or cleanliness — the 
death the million die in lowly huts, yet, oh, how hard ! 

“ Haste, sonny, good boy,” the frightened father had 
said, knowing not how ill he was, in his dependence on 
his wife ; “ take the horse, and ride into Snow Hill for 
the doctor. Poor mother is dreadful sick !” 

Then, leaping upon the lean old horse, bare-backed 
and with a rope bridle, Meshach had pushed through the 
deep sand, bareheaded and barefooted, and almost crazy 
with excitement, until he entered the shining streets of 
the sandhilled town, and sensitively rushed into the doc- 
tor’s office, crying, “Daddy and mammy is sick, at the 
Furnace !” and told his name, and wheeled, and fled. 

But, as the boy rode home, more slowly, past the river 
full of splutter-docks, the yellow masts of vessels rising 
above the woods, the flat fields of corn everywhere bound- 
ed by forest, and the small white houses of the better 
farmers, and at last entered the murmurous, complaining 
woods, he saw but one thing — his mother. 

Was she to disappear from the lonely clearing, and 
leave only the hut and its orphans ? she, who kept heaven 
here below, and was the saints, the arts, the all-sufficient 
for her child? With her there could be no poverty; 
without her riches would be only more sand. With a 
little molasses she made Christmas kingly with a cake. 
She could name a little chicken “ Meshach,” and every 
egg it laid was a new toy. A mocking-bird caught in 
the swamp became one of the family by her kindness ; 
would it ever sing again ? The religion they knew was 
all of her. The poor slaves saw no difference in mis- 
tresses while she was theirs.’ In sickness she was in her 
sphere — health itself had come. And once, the ten- 


’THE BOG-ORE TRACT. 


31 


derest thing in life, when his father and she had quar- 
relled, and the light of love being out made the darkness 
of poverty for the only time visible, Meshach saw her 
weeping, and he could not comfort her. 

Then, blinded by tears, he lashed his nag along, and 
entered the low door. She was dead ! 

“ Sonny, mammy’s gone!” the wretched father groaned ; 
the little children, huddling about the form, lifted their 
wail; the mocking-bird could find no note for this, and 
was hushed. 

Milburn arose ; the fire was low. He walked to the 
door, and there was a sign of day; the all-surrounding 
woods of pine were still dark, but on the sandy road and 
hummock-field some light was shining, like hopefulness 
against hope ; the farm was ploughed no more ; the un- 
grateful centuries were left behind and abandoned, like 
old wilderness battle-fields, so sterile that their great 
events remain ever unvisited. 

“ Ho ! Samson, boy ! It is time !” 

“Yes, marster!” answered the negro in the loft. 

As the negro gathered himself up and passed down 
the stairs, he saw Meshach Milburn before the fire, stir- 
ring the coals. Passing out, Samson stood a moment at 
the gate, and lounged up the road, not to lose his mas- 
ter. As he stood there, flames burst out of the old hut 
and glistened on the evergreen forest, lighting the tops 
of the mossy cypresses in the mill-pond, and revealing 
the forms of the sandy fields. Before he could start back 
Samson saw his master’s figure go round and round the 
house, lighting the weather-boarding from place to place 
with a torch ; and then the low figure, capped with the 
long hat, came up the road as if at mighty strides, so 
lengthened by the fire. 

“No need of alarm, boy!” exclaimed the filial inceiv 
diary. “ Henceforth my only ancestral hall is here /” 

He held the ancient tile up in the light of the blaze. 


32 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Ah, marster !” said the negro, “ yo’ hat will never give 
comfort like a home, fine as de hat may be, mean as de 
roof ! De hat will never hold two heads, and dat makes 
happiness.” 

“ The hat, at least,” answered Milburn, bitterly, “ will 
cover me where I go. Such rotted roofs as that was 
make captives of bright souls.” 

They looked on the fire in silence a few minutes. 

“You have burnt me out, boss,” said old Samson, 
finally. “I ain’t got no place to go an’ hide when I 
fights, now. It makes me feel solemn.” 

“ Peace !” replied Meshach Milburn. “ Now for the 
horses and Princess Anne !” 


Chapter VI. 

THE CUSTISES RUINED. 

Vesta Custis, dressing in her chamber, heard early 
wheels upon the morning air, and looking through the 
blinds saw a double team coming up the road from 
Hardship. 

“ Mother,” she said, “ is that father coming, yonder ? 
No, it is not his driver.” 

“ Why, Vesta !” exclaimed Mrs. Custis, “ that is old 
Milburn’s man.” 

“ Samson Hat ? so it is. What is he doing with two 
horses ?” 

Here Vesta laughed aloud, and began to skip about in 
her long, slender, worked slippers, whose insteps would 
spare a mouse darting under. 

“ Mamma, it is Milburn himself, in a hack and span. 
See there ; the steeple-top hat, copper buckle and all ! 
Isn’t he too funny for anything ! But, dear me ! he is 
staring right up at this window. Let us duck!” 


THE CUSTISES RUINED. 


33 


Vesta's long, ivory-grained arms, divided from her 
beautiful shoulders only by a spray of lace, pulled her 
mother down. 

“ Don’t be afraid, dear ! he can see nothing but the 
blinds. Perhaps he is looking for the Judge.” 

Vesta rose again in her white morning- gown, like a 
stag rising from a snow-drift. A long, trembling move- 
ment, the result of tittering,, passed down the graceful 
column of her back. 

“Pie sits there like an Indian riding past in a show, 
mamma ! Did you ever see such a hat?” 

“I think it must be buggy by this time,” said the 
mother ; and both of them shook with laughter again- 
“Unless,” added Mrs. Custis, “the bugs are starved 
out.” 

“ Poor, lonely creature,” said Vesta, “ he can only wear 
such a hat from want of understanding.” 

“ His understanding is good enough, dear. He has the 
green gaiters on.” 

They laughed again, and Vesta's hair, shaken down by 
her merriment, fell nearly to her slipper, like the skin of 
some coal-black beast, that had sprung down a poplar’s 
trunk. 

“ Ah ! well,” exclaimed Vesta, as her maid entered 
and proceeded to wind up this satin cordage on her 
crown, “what men are in their minds, can woman know? 
Old ladies, not unfrequently, wear their old coal-scuttle 
bonnets long past the fashion, but it is from want. This 
man is his own master and not poor. His companion is 
a negro, and his taste a mouldy hat, old as America. 
How happy are we that it is not necessary to pry into 
such minds! A little refinement is the next blessing to 
religion.” 

“Your father’s mind is a puzzle, too, Vesta. He has 
everything which these foresters lack, — education, society, 
standing, and comforts. But he returns to the forest, like 

3 


34 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


an opossum, the moment your eye is off him. He can’t 
be traced up like this man, by his hat. I think it’s 
a shame on you, particularly. If he don’t come home 
this day, I shall send for my brother and force an ac- 
count of my property from Judge Custis !” 

The wife sat down and began to cry. 

“I’ll take the carriage after breakfast, mamma, and 
seek him at the Furnace or wherever he may be. Those 
bog ores have given him a great deal of trouble.” 

“I wish I had never heard of bog ore,” exclaimed 
Mrs. Custis. “ When the money was in bank, there was 
no ore about it. He goes to the forest looking like a 
magistrate and a gentleman ; he always comes back look- 
ing like a bog-trotter and a drunkard. There must be 
women in it !” 

Here, in an impulse of weak rage, the poor lady got 
up and walked to her mirror and looked at her face. 
Apparently satisfied that such charms were trampled on, 
she dried her tears altogether, and resumed : 

“ Ginny, go out of the room ! (to the neat mulatto lass). 
Vesta, my dear daughter, I would not cast a stain upon 
you for the world ; but flesh and blood will cry out. If 
your father don’t do better I will separate from him, and 
leave Princess Anne !” 

“ Why, mother /” 

The daughter’s bright eyes were large and startled 
now, and their steel-blue tint grew plainer under her rich 
black eyebrows. 

“I will do it, if I die, unless he reforms !” 

“Why, mother !” 

Vesta stood with her lips parted, and her beautiful 
teeth just lacing the coral of the lip. She could say no 
more for a long moment. Rising as she spoke, with her 
head thrown back, and her mould the fuller and a pallor 
in her cheeks, she looked the Eve first hearing the Crea- 
tor’s rebuke. 


THE CUSTISES RUINED. 


35 

“A separation in this family?” whispered Vesta. “It 
would scandalize all Maryland. It would break my heart.” 

“ Darling daughter, my heart must be considered some- 
times. I was something before I was a Custis. I am 
a woman, too.” 

Vesta, still pale, crossed to her mother’s side and 
kissed her. 

“Don’t, don’t, mamma, ever harbor a thought like that 
again. You, who have been so brave and patient longer 
than I have lived !” 

“ Ah, Vesta, it is the length of injury that wears us 
out! What if something should happen to us? None 
are so unfit to bear poverty as we.” 

“ We cannot be poor,” said the daughter, soothingly. 
“ Don’t you remember, mother, where it says : ‘ As thy 
day, so shall thy strength be’ ?” 

“My child,” Mrs. Custis replied, “your day is young. 
Life looks hopeful to you. I am growing old, and where 
is the arm on which I should be leaning? What are we 
but two women left ? There is another passage on which 
I often think when we sit so often alone: ‘Two women 
shall be grinding at the mill : the one shall be taken and 
the other left !’ Is that you, or is it I ? Listen, my child ! 
it is time that you should feel the melancholy truth ! 
Your father’s habits have mastered him. He is beyond 
reclamation !” 

Vesta was kneeling, and she slowly raised her head 
and looked at her mother, with her nostrils dilated. Mrs. 
Custis felt uneasy before the aroused mind of her child. 

“ Don’t look at me so, Vesta,” the poor lady pleaded. 
“ I thought you ought to know it.” 

“How dare you say that of my father? Of Judge 
Custis?” 

As they were in this suspense of feeling, wheels were 
heard. The daughter went to the window and looked 
down, and then returned to her mother’s ear. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


36 

“ Hush, mother, it is papa. Now, wash your eyes at the 
toilet. Let us meet him cheerfully. Never say again 
that he is beyond reclamation, while we can try !” 

A kiss smoothed Mrs. Custis’s countenance. Vesta 
was dressed for breakfast in a few moments, and de- 
scended to the library and was received in her father’s 
arms. He held her there a long while, and held her 
close, and by little fits renewed his embrace, but she felt 
that his breath was feverish and his arms trembled. 
Looking up at him she saw, indeed, that he was flushed, 
yet haggard and careworn. 

“Vessy,” he spoke with a feeble attempt to smile, 
“I want a glass of brandy. Mine gave out at the Fur- 
nace, and the morning ride has weakened me. Where 
is the key ?” 

She looked at him with a half-glance, so that he might 
not suspect, as if to measure his need of stimulant. 
Then, without a word, she led the way to the dining-room 
and unlocked the liquor closet, and turned her back lest 
he might not drink his need from sensitiveness. 

‘‘Naughty man,” said Vesta, standing off and looking 
at him when he was done. “I was going down for you 
to the Furnace after breakfast. We will have no more of 
this truantry. Mamma and I have set our feet down ! 
You must come back from the Furnace every night, and 
go again in the morning, like other business men. Be 
very kind to mamma this morning, sir ! She feels your 
neglect.” 

Vesta had already rung for the Judge’s valet, who now 
appeared, drew off his boots, supplied his slippers and 
dressing-gown, and led the way to his bath. In a quarter 
of an hour he re-appeared, looking better, and he irreso- 
lutely turned again towards the dining-room, smiling sug- 
gestively at Vesta. 

“Not that way,” spoke she. “Here is mamma, and 
we are ready for prayers. Here is the place in the Bible.” 


THE CUSTISES RUINED. 


37 

They all went to the family room, where the dressing- 
maids of Vesta and her mother were waiting for the 
usual morning prayers. Vesta placed the open Bible on 
her father’s knee, and he began absently and stumblingly 
to read. It was in the book of Samuel, and seemed to 
be some old Jewish mythology. He suddenly came to a 
verse which arrested his sensibilities by its pathos : 

“ ‘ And David sent messengers to Ish-bosheth, Saul’s 
son, saying, Deliver me my wife Michal. . . . And Ish- 
bosheth sent, and took her from her husband, even from 
Phaltiel, the son of Laish. And her husband went with 
her along weeping behind her. . . . Then said Abner 
unto him : Go, return. And he returned.’ ” 

Judge Custis saw at once the picture this compact his- 
tory aroused. The inexorable David, perhaps, had mar- 
ried another’s love. Occasion had arisen to embitter 
her kin, and they took her back and gave her in happi- 
ness to her pining lover. But, again, the man of correct 
habits triumphed over the sons of the king, and de- 
spatched Abner to tear his wife from her true husband’s 
arms. Poor Phaltiel followed her weeping, until ordered 
to go back — and back he went, forever desolate. 

The scene recalled the brutal demand of his creditor 
upon his child. The Judge’s eyes silently o’erflowed, and 
he could npt see. 

Vesta had watched him closely, as her silent magistracy 
detected a great anxiety or illness in her father. Lest 
her mother might also notice it, she interposed in the 
lesson, as was her habit, by reading the Episcopal form 
of prayer, in which they all*bent their heads. Once or 
twice, as she went on, she detected a suppressed sob, 
especially at the paragraph : “ Thou who knowest the 
weakness and corruption of our nature, and the mani- 
fold temptations which we daily meet with, we humbly 
beseech thee to have compassion on our infirmities 
and to give us the constant assistance of thy Holy 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


38 

Spirit, that we may be effectually restrained from sin 
and excited to our duty !” 

They went to the breakfast -table, and the Judge’s 
countenance was down. He bit off some toast and filled 
his mouth with tea, but could not swallow. A hand 
softly touched his elbow, and, looking there, he saw a 
wine-glass full of brandy softly glide to the spot. As he 
looked up and saw the rich, yearning face of his dark- 
eyed daughter tenderly consulting his weakness, his heart 
burst forth ; he leaned his head upon the table and cried, 
between drink and grief: 

“ Darling, we are ruined I” 

Mrs. Custis at once arose, and looked frightenedly at 
the Judge. Vesta as quickly turned to the servants and 
motioned them to go. 

“ No, let them hear it!” raved Judge Custis, perceiving 
the motion. “ They are interested, like us. They must 
be sold, too. Faithful servants! Perhaps it may warn 
them to escape in time !” 

The servants, bred like ladies, quietly left the room. 

Mrs. Custis, growing paler, exclaimed : 

“ Daniel Custis, have you lost everything in that fur- 
nace ?” 

“ Everything !” 

“ And my money, too ?” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Merciful God !” 

Before the weak lady could fall Vesta’s arm was around 
her, and her finger on the table-bell. Servants entered 
and Mrs. Custis was carried out, her daughter follow- 
ing. 

When Vesta returned her father was walking up and 
down the floor with his long silk handkerchief in both 
hands, weeping bitterly, and speaking broken syllables. 
She looked at him a moment with all the might of a 
daughter, first called on to act alone in a great crisis. 


THE CUSTISES RUINED. 


39 


The feeling she was wont to hold towards him, of per- 
fect pride, had received a blow in her mother’s expres- 
sion : “Your father’s habits have mastered him beyond 
reclamation.” 

Could this be true ; that he, the grand, the kind, the 
gentleman, was beneath the diver’s reach, the plummet’s 
sounding, where light could not pierce, nor Hope over- 
take ? Her father, the first gentleman in Somerset, a 
drunkard, going ever downward towards the gutter, and 
no ray of heaven to beam upon his grave ! 

She saw his danger now : it was written on his face, 
where the image of God shone dim that had once been 
crowned there. Hair thinner, and very gray; the rich, 
dark eyes intimidated, as if manly confidence was gone; 
the skin no more the pure scroll of regular life written in 
the healthy fluid of the heart, but faded, yet spotted with 
alcohol; on the nose and lips signs of coarser sensuality; 
the large skeleton bent and the nervous temperament 
shattered. This father had been until this moment 
Vesta’s angel. Now, there might not be an angel in the 
universe to fly to his rescue. Deep, dreadful humility 
descended into the daughter’s spirit. 

“ God forgive me !” she thought, “ how blind and how 
proud and sinful I have been !” 

She walked over to her father tenderly and kissed him, 
and then, drawing his weaker inclination by hers, brought 
him to a sofa, placed a pillow for him, and made him 
stretch his once proud form there. Procuring a bowl 
of water, she washed his face free of tears with a napkin, 
and bathed it in cologne. The voluptuous nature of the 
Judge yielded to the perfume and the easy position, and 
he sobbed himself to sleep like an exhausted child. 

Sitting by the sleeping bankrupt, watching his breast 
rise and fall, and hearing his coarse snoring, as if fiends 
within were snarling in rivalry for the possession of him, 
Vesta felt that the life which was unconscious there was 


40 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


the fountain of her own, and, loving no man else, she felt 
her heart like a goldfish of that fountain, go around and 
around it throbbingly. 

Then first arose the wish, often in woman’s life re- 
peated, to have been born a man, and know how to help 
her father. That suggested that she had brothers who 
ought to be summoned, and confer with their father ; but 
now it occurred to her that every one of them had leaned 
upon him ; and, though conscious that it was wicked, 
Vesta felt her pride rise against the thought that any be- 
ing outside of that house, even a brother, should know 
of its disgrace. 

What could she do? -She thought of all her jewels, 
her riding mare, her watch, her father’s own gifts, and 
then the thought perished that these could help him. 

Could she not earn something by her voice, which had 
sung to such praises? Alas! that voice had lost the in- 
gredient of hope, and she feared to unclose her lips lest 
it might come forth in agony, crying, “ God, have mercy !” 

“I have nothing,” said Vesta to herself; “except love 
for these two martyrs, my father and mother. No, noth- 
ing can be done until he awakens and tells me the worst. 
Meantime it would be wicked for me to increase the agi- 
tation already here, and where I must be the comforter.” 


Chapter VII. 
jack-o’-lantern iron. 

Mrs. Custis was in no situation to give annoyance for 
that day, as a sick-headache seized her and she kept her 
room. Infirm of will, purely social in her marriage re- 
lations, and never aiming higher than respectability, she 
missed the coarse mark of her husband who, with -all his 
moral defections, probably was her moral equal, his vital 


4i 


jack-o’-lantern iron. 

standard higher, his tone a genial hypocrisy, and at bot- 
tom he was a democrat. 

Mrs. Custis had no insight nor variability of charity ; 
her mind, bounded by the municipal republic of Balti- 
more, which esteems itself the world, particularly among 
its mercantile aristocracy, who live like the old Venetian 
nobility among their flat lagoons, and do commerce 
chiefly with the Turk in the more torrid and instinctive 
Indies and South. Amiable, social, afraid of new ideas, 
frugal of money ; if hospitable at the table, with a certain 
spiritedness that is seldom intellectual, but a beauty that 
powerfully attracts, till, by the limited sympathies beneath 
it, the husband from the outer world discerns how hope- 
lessly slavery and caste sink into an old shipping society, 
the Baltimore that ruled the Chesapeake had no more 
perfected product than Mrs. Custis. 

Her modesty and virtue were as natural as her preju- 
dices; she believed that marriage was the close of female 
ambition, and marrying her children was the only inno- 
vation to be permitted. Certain accomplishments she 
thought due to woman, but none of them must become 
masculine in prosecution ; a professional woman she 
shrank from as from an infidel or an abolitionist ; read- 
ing was meritorious up to an orthodox point, but a passion 
for new books was dangerous, probably irreligious. To 
lose one’s money was a crime ; to lose another’s money 
the unforgiven sin, because that was Baltimore public 
opinion, which she thought was the only opinion entitled 
to consideration. The old Scotch and Irish merchants 
there had made it the law that enterprise was only ex- 
cusable by success, and that success only branded an in- 
novator. A good standard of society, therefore, had bare- 
ly permitted Judge Custis to take up the bog-ore manu- 
facture, and, failing in it, his wife thought he was no bet- 
ter than a Jacobin. 

On the Eastern Shore, where society was formed be- 


42 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


fore Glasgow and Belfast had colonized upon the Chesa- 
peake with their precise formulas of life, a gentler be- 
nevolence rose and descended upon the ground every 
day, like the evaporations of those prolific seas which 
manure the thin soil unfailingly. Religion and benevo- 
lence were depositions rather than dogmas there ; mod- 
erate poverty was the not unwelcome expectation, wealth 
a subject of apprehensive scruples, kindness the law, 
pride the exception, and grinding avarice, like Meshach 
Milburn’s, was the mark of the devil entering into the 
neighbor and the fellow-man. 

Judge Custis was representative of his neighbors ex- 
cept in his Virginia voluptuousness ; his neighbors were 
neither prudes nor hypocrites, and he respected them 
more than the arrogant race in the old land of Accomac 
and in the Virginia peninsulas, whose traits he had al- 
most lost. Sometimes it seemed to him that the last of 
the cavalier stock was his daughter, Vesta. From him it 
had nearly departed, and his sense of moral shortcom- 
ings expanded his heart and made him tenderly pious to 
his kind, if not to God. He admired new-comers, new 
business modes, and Northern intruders and ideas, feel- 
ing that perhaps the last evidence of his aristocracy from 
nature was a chivalric resignation. The pine-trees were 
saying to him : “Ye shall go like the Indians, but be not 
inhospitable to your successors, and leave them your 
benediction, that the great bay and its rivers may be 
splendid with ships and men, though ye are perished for- 
ever.” A perception of the energy of his countrymen, 
and a pride in it, without any mean reservation, though 
it might involve his personal humiliation, was Judge Cus- 
tis’s only remaining claim to heaven’s magnanimity. Still, 
rich in human nature, he was beloved by his daughter 
with all her soul. 

He awoke long after noon, in body refreshed, and a 
glass of milk and’ a plover broiled on toast were ready 


jack-o’-lantern iron. 


43 


for him to eat, with some sprigs of new celery from the 
garden to feed his nerves. He made this small meal 
silently, and Vesta said, as the tray was removed: 

“ Now, papa, before we leave this room, you are to tell 
me the whole injury you have suffered, and what all of 
us can do to assist you ; for if you had succeeded the 
reward would have been ours, and we must divide the 
pains of your misfortune with you without any regret. 
Courage, papa ! and let me understand it.” 

The Judge feebly looked at Vesta, then searched his 
mind with his eyes downcast, and finally spoke : 

“ My child, I am the victim of good intentions and self- 
enjoyment. I am less than a scoundrel and worse than 
a fool. I am a fraud, and you must be made to see it, 
for I fear you have been proud of me.” 

“Oh, father, I have!” said Vesta, with an instant’s 
convulsion. “ You were my God.” 

“ Let us throw away idolatry, my darling. It is the 
first of all the sins. How loud speaks the first command- 
ment to us this moment : 1 Thou shalt have no other gods 
before me ’ ? ” 

“ I have broken it,” sobbed Vesta, “ I loved you more 
than my Creator.” 

“Vesta,” spoke the Judge, “you are the only thing 
of value in all my house. The work of nature in you 
is all that survives the long edifice of our pride. The 
treasure of your beauty and love still makes me rich 
to thieves, who lie in ambush all around us. We are in 
danger, we are pursued. O God ! pity, pity the pure in 
heart !” 

As the Judge, under his strong earnestness, so rare in 
him of late, threw wide his arms, and raised his brow in 
agony, Vesta felt her idolatry come back. He was so 
grand, standing there in his unaffected pain and helpless- 
ness, that he seemed to her some manly Prometheus, 
who had worked with fire and iron, to the exasperation 


44 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


of the jealous gods. Admiration dried her tears, and she 
forgot her father’s references to herself. 

“ What is iron ?” she asked. “ Tell me why you wanted 
to make iron ! If I can enter into your mind and sym- 
pathize with the hopes you have had, it will lift my soul 
from the ground. Papa, I should have asked for this 
lesson long ago.” 

The Judge strode up and down till she repeated the 
question, and had brought him to his seat. He collected 
his thoughts, and resumed his worldly tone as he pro- 
ceeded, with his old cavalier volatility, to tell the tale of 
iron. 

“ I have duplicated loans,” he said at last, “ on the 
same properties, incurring, I fear, a stigma upon my family 
and character; as well as the ruin of our fortune.” 

Vesta arose with pale lips and a sinking heart. 

“ Oh, father,” she whispered, in a frightened tone,” who 
knows this terrible secret !” 

“ Only one man,” said the Judge, cowering down to 
the carpet, with his courage and volatility immediately 
gone, “old Meshach Milburn knows it all ! He has pur- 
chased the duplicate notes of protest, and holds them 
with his own. He has me in his power, and hates me. 
He will expose me, unless I submit to an awful condition.” 

“What is it, father?” 

The Judge looked up in terror, and, meeting Vesta’s 
pale but steady gaze, hid his face and groaned : 

“ Oh ! it is too disgraceful to tell. It will break your 
mother’s heart.” 

“ Tell me at once !” exclaimed Vesta, in a low and 
hollow tone. “ What further disgrace can this monster 
inflict upon us than to expose our dishonor ? Can he 
kill us more than that?” 

“ I know not how to tell you, Vessy. ' Spare me, my 
darling ! My face I hide for shame.” 

There was a pause, while Vesta, with her mind ex- 


THE HAT FINDS A RACK. 


45 


panded to touch every point of suggestion, stood looking 
down at her father, yet hardly seeing him. He did not 
move. 

Vesta stooped and raised her father’s face to find some 
solution of his mysterious evasion. He shut his eyes as 
if she burned him with her wondering look. 

“Papa, look at me this instant! You shall not be a 
coward to me.” 

He broke from her hands and retreated to a window, 
looking at her, but with a timorous countenance. 

“ I wish you to go this moment and find your creditor, 
Mr. Milburn, and bring him to me. You must obey me, 
sir !” 

The father raised his hands as if to protest, but before 
he could speak a shadow fell upon the window, and the 
figure of a small, swarthy man covered with a steeple- 
crowned hat advanced up the front steps. 

“ Saviour, have mercy !” murmured Judge Custis, “the 
wolf is at the door.” 

Vesta took her father in her arms, and kissed him once 
assuringly. 

“ Papa, go send a servant to open the door. Have 
Mr. Milburn shown into this room to await me. Do you 
go and engage my mother affectionately, and both of you 
remain in your chamber till I am ready to call you.” 

The proximity of the dreadful creditor had almost 
paralyzed Judge Custis, and he glided out like a ghost. 


Chapter VIII. 

THE HAT FINDS A RACK. 

Meshach Milburn had locked the store after writing 
some letters, and had taken the broad street for Judge 
Custis’s gate. The news of his disappearance towards 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


46 

the Furnace, with an extravagant livery team, had spread 
among all the circle around the principal tavern, and 
they were discussing the motive and probabilities of the 
act, with that deep inner ignorance so characteristic of 
an instinctive society. Old Jimmy Phoebus, a huge man, 
with a broad face and small forehead, was called upon 
for his view. 

“ It’s nothin’ but a splurge,” said Jimmy ; “sooner or 
later everybody splurges — shows off! Meshach’s jest 
spilin’ with money and he must have a splurge — two hosses 
and a nigger. If it ain’t a splurge I can’t tell what ails 
him to save my life.” 

A general chorus went up of “ Dogged if I kin tell to 
save my life !” 

Levin Dennis, the terrapin-buyer, made a wild guess, 
as follows : 

“ Meshach, I reckon, is a goin’ into the hoss business. 
He’s a ben in everything else, and has tuk to hosses. 
If it tain’t hosses, I can’t tell to save my life !” 

All the lesser intellects of the party executed a low 
chuckle, spun around half-way on their boot-heels and 
back again, and muttered : “ Not to save my life !” 

Jack Wonnell, wearing one of the new bell-crowns, and 
barefooted, and looking like a vagrant who had tried on 
a militia grenadier’s imposing bearskin hat, let off this 
irrelevant addendum : 

“Ole Milbun’s gwyn to see a gal. Fust time a man 
changes his regler course wilently, it’s a gal. I went into 
my bell-crowns to git a gal. Milbun’s gwyn get a gal 
out yonda in forest. If that ain’t it, can’t tell to save 
m’ life !” 

The smaller fry, not being trained to suggestion, grinned, 
held their mouths agape, executed the revolution upon 
one heel, and echoed : “ Dogged ef a kin tell t’ save in’ 
life !” 

“ He’s a cornin’, boys, whooep !” exclaimed Jimmy 


THE HAT FINDS A RACK. 


47 


Phoebus. “Now we’ll all take off our hats an’ do it po- 
lite, for, by smoke ! thar’s goin’ to be hokey-pokey of 
some kind or nuther in Prencess Anne !” 

The smallish man in the Guy Fawkes hat and the old, 
ultra-genteel, greenish gaiters, walked towards them with 
his resinous bold eyes to the front, his nose informing 
him of what was in the air like any silken terrier’s, and 
yet with a pallor of the skin as of a sick person’s, and 
less than his daily expression of hostility to Princess 
Anne. 

“ He’s got the ager,” remarked Levin Dennis, “them’s 
the shakes, cornin’ on him by to-morrey, ef I know tarra- 
pin bubbles !” 

The latter end only of the nearest approach to pro- 
fanity current in that land was again heard, fluttering 
around : “ to save my life !” 

Jimmy Phoebus had the name of being descended from 
a Greek pirate, or patriot, who had settled on the Eastern 
Shore, and Phoebus looked it yet, with his rich brown 
complexion, broad head, and Mediterranean eyes. “Good- 
afternoon, Mr. Milburn !” spoke Jimmy, loud and care- 
less. 

“ Good-afternoon, Mr. Phoebus. Gentlemen, good-after- 
noon !” 

As he responded, with a voice hardly genial but placat- 
ing, Milburn lifted his ancient and formidable hat, and in 
an instant seemed to come a century nearer to his neigh- 
bors. His stature was reduced, his unsociableness seemed 
modified; he now looked to be a smallish, friendless per- 
son, as if some ownerless dog had darted through the 
street, and heard a kind chirp at the tavern door, where 
his reception had been stones. His voice, with a little 
tremor in it, emboldened Levin Dennis also to speak : 

“ Look out for fevernager this month, Mr. Milburn !” 

Meshach bowed his head, gliding along as if bashfully 
anxious to pass. 


4 8 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Nice weather for drivin’ !” added Jack Wonnell, hav- 
ing also taken off his own tile of frivolity, to feel the effect ; 
but this remark was regarded by the group as too forward, 
and a low chorus ran round of “Jack Wonnell can’t help 
bein’ a fool to save his life !” 

Milburn said to himself, passing on : “ Are those voices 
kinder than usually, or am I more timid ? What is it in 
the air that makes everything so acute, and my cheeks to 
tingle ? Am I sick, or is it Love ?” 

The word frightened him, and the sand under his feet 
seemed to crack ; a woodpecker in an old tree tapped 
as if it was the tree’s old heart quickened by something; 
the houses all around looked like live objects, with their 
windows fixed upon his walk, like married folks’ eyes. 
As he came in sight of Judge Custis’s residence, so ex- 
pressive of old respect and long intentions, the money- 
lender almost stopped, so mild and peacefully it looked 
at him — so undisturbed, while he was palpitating. 

“Why this pain?” thought Milburn. “Am I afraid? 
That house is mine. Do I fear to enter my own ? And 
yet it does not fear me. It has been there so long that 
it has no fears, and every window in it faces benignant to 
my coming. The three gables survey yonder forest land- 
scape like three old magistrates on the bench, adminis- 
tering justice to a county where never till now was there 
a ravisher !” 

The thought produced a moment’s intellectual pride in 
him, like lawless power’s uneasy paroxysm. “It is the 
Forest these gentles have to fear to-day !” he thought, re- 
sentfully, then stopped, with another image his word 
aroused : 

“What has that forest ever felt of injury or hate, with 
every cabin -door unlatched, no robber feared by any 
there, the blossoms on the negro’s peach-tree, the ripe 
persimmons on the roadside, plenteous to every forester’s 
child, and humility and affection making all richer, with- 


THE HAT FINDS A RACK. 


49 


out a dollar in the world, than I, the richest upstart of the 
forest, compelled to buy affection, like an indifferent slave !” 

A large dog at Custis’s home, seeing him walk so 
slowly, came down the path to the gate, also walking 
slow, and showed neither animosity nor interest, except 
mechanically to walk behind him towards the door. 

“ The dog knows me,” thought the quickened heart of 
Meshach, “ from life-long seeing of me, but never wagged 
his tail at me in all that time. Could I acquire the heart 
even of this dog, though I might buy him ? My debtor’s 
step would still be most welcome to him, and he would 
eat my food in strangeness and fear.” 

Milburn walked up the steps, and sounded the sub- 
stantial brass knocker. It struck four times, loud and 
deep, and the stillness that followed was louder yet, like 
the unknown thing, after sentence has been passed. He 
seemed to be there a very long time with his heart quite 
vacant, as if the debtor’s knocker had scared every chat- 
terer out of it, and yet his temples and ears were ringing. 
He was thinking of sounding the knocker again, when a 
lady’s servant, partly white, rolled back the bolt, and 
bowed to his question whether the Judge was in. 

He entered the broad hall of that distinguished resi- 
dence, and taking the Entailed Hat from his head, hung 
it up at last, where better head-coverings had been wont 
to keep equal society, on a carved mahogany rack of 
colonial times. The venerable object, once there, gave a 
common look to everything, as Meshach thought, and 
deepened his personal sense of unworthiness. He tried 
to feel angry, but apprehension was too strong for passion 
even to be simulated. 

“ O, discriminating God !” he felt, within, “ is it not 
enough to create us so unequal that we must also cringe 
in spirit, and acknowledge it ! I expected to feel trium- 
phant when I lodged my despised hat in this man’s 
house, but I feel meaner than before.” 

4 


5o 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


The room, whose door was opened by the lady’s maid, 
was the library, containing three cumbrous cases of books, 
and several portraits in oil, with deep, gilded frames, a 
map of Virginia and its northeastern environs, including 
all the peninsula south of the Choptank river and Cape 
Henlopen ; and near the door was a tall clock, that a 
giant might stand in, solemnly cogging and waving time, 
and giving the monotony of everlasting evening to the 
place, which was increased by the flickering fire of wood 
on the tall brass fire-irons, before which some high-backed, 
wide, comfortable leather chairs were drawn, all worn to 
luxurious attitudes, as if each had been the skin of Judge 
Custis and his companions, recently evacuated. 

A woman’s rocking-chair was disposed among them, as 
though every other chair deferred to it. This was the 
first article to arrest Milburn’s attention, so different, so 
suggestive, almost a thing of superstition, poised, like a 
woman’s instinct and will, upon nothing firm, yet, like the 
sphere it moved upon, traversing a greater arc than a 
giant’s seat would fill. Purity and conquest, power and 
welcome, seemed to abide within it, like the empty throne 
in Parliament. 

Milburn, being left alone, touched the fairy rocker with 
his foot. It started so easily and so gracefully, that, when 
it died away, he pressed liisr lips to the top of it, nearest 
where her neck would be, and whispered aloud, with feel- 
ing, “ God knows that kiss, at least, was pure !” 

He looked at the portraits, and, though they were not 
inscribed, he guessed at them all, right or wrong, from 
the insight of local lore or envious interpretation. 

“Yon saucy, greedy, superserviceable rogue,” thought 
Meshach, “with wine and beef in his cheeks, and silver 
and harlotry in his eye, was the Irish tavern-keeper of 
Rotterdam, who kept a heavy score against the banished 
princes whom Cromwell’s name ever made to swear and 
shiver, and they paid him in a distant office in Accomac, 


THE HAT FINDS A RACK. 


51 


where they might never see him and his bills again, and 
there they let him steal most of the revenue, and, of 
course, his loyalty was in proportion to his booty. Many 
a time, no doubt, he was procurer for both royal brothers, 
Charles and James, making his tavern their stew, with 
Betty Killigrew, or Lucy Walters, or Katy Peg, or even 
Anne Hyde, the mother of a queen — of her who was the 
Princess Anne, godmother of our worshipful town here. 
I have not read in vain,” concluded Meshach, “ because 
my noble townsmen drove me to my cell !” 

The next portrait was clothed in military uniform, with 
a higher type of manhood, shrewd and vigilant, but mag- 
isterial. “That should be Major-general John Custis,” 
thought Milburn, looking at it, “son of John the tapster, 
and a marrying, shifty fellow, who first began greatness 
as a salt-boiler on these ocean islands, till his father’s 
friend, Charles II., in a merry mood, made Henry Ben- 
net, the king’s bastard son’s father-in-law, Earl of Arling- 
ton and lessee of Virginia. All the province for forty 
shillings a year rent ! Those were pure, economical 
times, indeed, around the court. So salt-boiler John 
flunkeyed to Arlington’s overseers, named his farm ‘ Ar- 
lington,’ hunted and informed upon the followers of the 
Puritan rebel Bacon, then turned and fawned upon King 
William, too. His grandchildren, all well provided for, 
spread around this bay. So much for politics in a mer- 
chant’s hands !” 

The tone of Meshach’s comment had somewhat raised 
his courage, and a sense of pleasurable interest in the 
warm room and genial surroundings led him to pass the 
time, which was of considerable length, quite content- 
edly, till Judge Custis was ready. 

* * # # * * 

Meanwhile, the steeple-top hat was giving some silent 
astonishment to the house - servants, assembled to gaze 
upon it from the foot of the hall. The neat chamber-ser- 


52 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


vant, Virgie, had carried the wondrous information to the 
colonnade that the dreadful creditor had come, and Roxy, 
the table waiter, had carried it from the colonnade to the 
kitchen, where the common calamity immediately pro- 
duced a revolution against good manners. 

“ Hab he got dat debbil hat on he head, chile ?” in- 
quired Aunt Hominy, laying down the club with which 
she was beating biscuit-dough on the block. 

“Yes, aunty, he’s left it on the hat-rack. I’m afraid 
to go past it to the do’.” 

Aunt Hominy threw the club on the blistered bulk of 
dough, and retreated towards the big black fireplace, with 
a face expressive of so much fright and cunning humor 
together that it seemed about to turn white, but only got 
as far as a pucker and twitches. 

“De Lord a massy!” exclaimed Aunt Hbminy, “chil- 
len, le’s burn dat hat in de fire ! Maybe it’ll liff de trouble 
off o’ dis yer house. We got de hat jess wha’ we want 
it, chillen. Roxy, gal, you go fotch it to Aunt Hominy !” 

The girl started as if she had been asked to take up a 
snake : “ ’Deed, Aunt Hominy, I wouldn’t touch it to save 
my life. Nobody but ole Samson ever did that !” 

“ Go ’long, gal !” cried Aunt Hominy, “ didn’t Miss 
Vessy hole dat ar’ hat one time, an’ pin a white rose in 
it? Didn’t he, dat drefful Meshach Milbun, offer Miss 
Vessy a gole dollar, an’ she wouldn’ have none of his 
gole ? Dat she did ! Virgie, you go git dat hat, chile ! 
Poke it off de rack wid my pot-hook heah. ’Twon’t hurt 
you, gal! I’ll sprinkle ye fust wid camomile an’ witch- 
hazel dat I keep up on de chimney-jamb.” 

Aunt Hominy turned towards the broadly notched 
chimney sides, where fifty articles of negro pharmacy 
were kept— bunches of herbs, dried peppers, bladders of 
seeds, and bottles of every mystic potency. 

“Aunty,” answered Virgie, “if I wasn’t afraid of the 
Bad Man, I would be afraid to move that hat, because 


THE HAT FINDS A RACK. 


$3 

Miss Vessy would be mortified. Think of her seeing me 
treating a visitor’s things like that. Why, I’d rather be 
sold !” 

“Dat hat,” persisted Aunt Hominy, “is de ruin ob dis 
family. Dat hat, gals, de debbil giv’ ole Meshach, an’ 
made him wear it fo’ de gift ob gittin’ all de gole in Som- 
erset County. Don’t I know when he wore it fust ? Dat 
was when he begun to git all de gole. Fo’ dat he had 
been po’ as a lizzer, sellin’ to niggers, cookin’ fo’ hesefif, 
an’ no ’count, nohow. He sot up in de loft of his ole sto’ 
readin’ de Bible upside down to git de debbil’s frenship. 
De debbil come in one night, and says to ole Meshach : 
‘ Yer’s my hat ! Go, take it, honey, and measure land wid 
it, and all de land you measure is yo’s, honey !’ An’ Me- 
shach’s measured mos’ all dis county in. Jedge Custis’s 
land is de last.” 

The relation affected both girls considerably, and the 
group of little colored boys and girls still more, who came 
up almost chilled with terror, to listen ; but it produced 
the greatest effect on Aunt Hominy herself, whose imag- 
ination, widened in the effort, excited all her own fears, 
and gave irresistible vividness to her legend. 

“ How can his hat measure people’s lands in, Aunty ?” 
asked Virgie, drawing Roxy to her by the waist for their 
mutual protection. 

“ Why, chile, he measures land in by de great long 
shadows dat debbil’s hat throws. Meshach, he sots his 
eyes on a good farm. Says he, ‘ I’ll measure dat in !’ 
So he gits out dar some sun-up or sun-down, when de 
sun jest sots a’mos’ on de groun, an’ ebery tree an’ fence- 
pos’ and standin’ thing goes away over de land, frowin’ 
long crooked shadows. Dat’s de time Meshach stans 
up, wid dat hat de debbil gib him to make him longer, jest 
a layin’ on de fields like de shadow of a big church-steeple. 
He walks along de road befo’ de farm, and wherever dat 
hat makes a mark on de ground all between it an’ where 


54 the entailed hat. 

he walks is ole Meshach’s land. Dat’s what he calls his 
mortgage ! ” 

The children had their mouths wide open ; the maids 
heard with faith only less than fear. 

“ But, Aunt Hominy,” spoke Roxy, “ he never meas- 
ured in Judge Custis’s house, and all of us in it, that is 
to be sold.” 

“ Didn’t I see him a doin’ of it ?” whispered Aunt 
Hominy, stooping as if to creep, in the contraction of her 
own fears, and looking up into their faces with her fists 
clinched. “ He’s a ben cornin’ along de fence on de 
darkest, cloudiest nights dis long a time, like a man dat 
was goin’ to rob something, and peepin’ up at Miss Ves- 
sy’s window. He took de dark nights, when de streets 
of Prencess Anne was clar ob folks, an’ de dogs was in 
deir cribs, an’ nuffin’ goin’ aroun’ but him an’ wind an’ 
cold an’ rain. One night, while he was watchin’ Miss 
Vessy’s window like a black crow, from de shadow of de 
tree, I was a-watchin’ of him from de kitchen window. De 
moon, dat had been all hid, come right from bellin’ de 
rain-clouds all at once, gals, an’ scared him like. De 
moon was low on de woods, chillen, an’ as ole Meshach 
turned an’ walked away, his debbil’s shadow swept dis 
house in. He measured it in dat night. It’s ben his 
ever since.” 

“Well,” exclaimed Roxy, after a pause, “I know I 
wouldn’t take hold of that hat now.” 

“I am almost afraid to look at it,” said Virgie, “but 
if Miss Vessy told me to go bring it to her, I would do it.” 

“ Le’s us all go together,” ventured Aunt Hominy, “and 
take a peep at it. Maybe it won’t hurt us, if we all go.” 

Aware that Judge Custis and his wife were not near, 
the little circle of servants — Aunt Hominy, Virgie, Roxy, 
and the four children, from five to fourteen years of age 
— filed softly from the kitchen through the covered colon- 
nade, and thence along the back passage to the end of the 


THE HAT FINDS A RACK. 


55 


hall, where they made a group, gazing with believing won- 
der at the King James tile. 

* * * Vesta Custis, having changed her morning robe 
for a walking-suit, and slightly rearranged her toilet, and 
knelt speechless awhile to receive the unknown will of 
Heaven, came down the stairs at last, in time to catch a 
glimpse of half-a-dozen servants staring at a strange old 
hat on the hall rack. They hastily fled at her appearance, 
but the idea of the hat was also conveyed to her own fancy 
by their unwonted behavior. She looked up an instant at 
the queer, faded article hanging among its betters, and 
with a reminiscence of childhood, and of having held it 
in her hand, there descended along the intervening years 
upon the association, the odor of a rose and the impres- 
sion of a pair of bold, startled eyes gazing into hers. She 
opened the library door, and the same eyes were looking 
up from her father’s easy-chair. 

“ Mr. Milburn, I believe ?” said Vesta, walking to the 
visitor, and extending her hand with native sweetness. 

He arose and bowed, and hardly saw the hand in the 
earnest look he gave her, as if she had surprised him, 
and he did not know how to express his bashfulness. 
She did not withdraw the hand till he took it, and then 
he did not let it go. His strong, rather than bold, look, 
continuing, she dropped her eyes to the hand that mildly 
held her own, and then she observed, all calm as she was, 
that his hand was a gentleman’s, its fingers long and al- 
most delicate, the texture white, the palm warm, and, as 
it seemed to her, of something like a brotherly pressure, 
respectful and gentle too. 

As he did not speak immediately, Vesta returned to 
his face, far less inviting, but peculiar — the black hair 
straight, the cheek-bones high, no real beard upon him 
anywhere, the shape of the face broad and powerful, and 
the chops long, while the yellowish-brown eyes, wide open 
and intense, answered to the open, almost observant nos- 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


56 

trils at the end of his straight, fine nose. His complex- 
ion was dark and forester-like, seeming to show a poor, 
unnutritious diet. He was hardly taller than Vesta. His 
teeth were good, and the mouth rather small. She thought 
he was uncertain what to say, or confused in his mind, 
though no sign of fear was visible. Vesta came to his 
rescue, withdrawing her hand naturally. 

“ I have seen you many times, Mr. Milburn, but never 
here, I think.” 

“ No, miss, I have never been here.” He hesitated. 
“ Nor anywhere in Princess Anne. You are the first lady 
here to speak to me.” 

His words, but not his tone, intimated an inferiority 
or a slight. The voice was a little stiff, appearing to be 
at want for some corresponding inflection, like a man who 
had learned a language without having had the use of it. 

“Will you sit, Mr. Milburn? You owe this visit so 
long that you will not be in haste to-day. I hope you 
have not felt that we were inhospitable. But little towns 
often encourage narrow circles, and make people more 
selfish than they intend.” 

“You could never be selfish, miss,” said Milburn, with- 
out any of the suavity of a compliment, still carrying that 
wild, regarding gaze, like the eyes of a startled ox. 

Vesta faintly colored at the liberty he took. It was 
slightly embarrassing to her, too, to meet that uninter- 
pretable look of inquiry and homage ; but she felt her ne- 
cessity as well as her good-breeding, and made allowance 
for her visitor’s want of sophistication. He was like an 
Indian before a mirror, in a stolid excitement of appre- 
hension and delight. The most beautiful thing he ever 
saw was within the compass of his full sight at last, and 
whether to detain it by force or persuasion he did not know. 

Her dark hair, silky as the cleanest tassels of the corn, 
fell as naturally upon her perfect head as her teeth, white 
as the milky corn-rows, moved in the May cherries of her 


THE HAT FINDS a RACK. 


57 

lips. The delicate arches of her brows, shaded by black- 
birds’ wings, enriched the clear sky of her harmonious 
eyes, where mercy and nobility kept companj', as in 
heaven. 

“ How could you know I was unselfish, Mr. Milburn ?” 

“ Because I have heard you sing.” 

“ Oh, yes ! You hear me in our church, I remember.” 

“ I have heard you every Sunday that you sung there 
for years,” said Meshach, with hardly a change of expres- 
sion. - 

“Are you fond of music, Mr. Milburn?” 

“Yes, I like all I have ever heard — birds and you.” 

“ I will sing for you, then,” said Vesta, taking the re- 
lief the talk directed her to. A piano was in another 
room, but, to avoid changing the scene, as well as to use 
a simpler accompaniment for an ignorant man’s ears, she 
brought her guitar, and, placing it in her lap, struck the 
strings and the key, without waiting, to these tender words : 

“ Oh, for some sadly dying note, 

Upon this silent hour to float, 

Where, from the bustling world remote, 

The lyre might wake its melody ! 

One feeble strain is all can swell, 

From mine almost deserted shell, 

In mournful accents yet to tell 
That slumbers not its minstrelsy. 

“There is an hour of deep repose, 

That yet upon my heart shall close, 

When all that nature dreads and knows 
Shall burst upon me wondrously ; 

Oh, may I then awake, forever, 

My harp to rapture’s high endeavor; 

And, as from earth’s vain scene I sever, 

Be lost in Immortality.” 

Vesta ceased a few minutes, and, her visitor saying noth- 
ing, she remarked, with emotion, 

“ Those lines were written at my grandfather’s house, 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


58 

in Accomac County, by a young clergyman from New 
York, who was grandfather’s rector, Rev. James East- 
burn. He was only twenty-two years old when he died, 
at sea, of consumption. His is the only poetry I have 
ever heard of, Mr. Milburn, written in our beautiful old 
country here.” 

“ I wondered if I should ever hear you sing for me,” 
spoke Milburn, after hesitation. “ Now it is realized, I 
feel sceptical about it. You are there, Miss Custis, are 
you not ?” 

Vesta was puzzled. Under other circumstances she 
would have been amused, since her humor could flow 
freely as her music. It faintly seemed to her that the 
little odd man might be cracked in the head. 

“Yes, indeed, Mr. Milburn. If it were a dream, I 
should have no expression all this day but song. I think 
I never felt so sad to sing as just now. Father is ill. 
Mamma is ill. I have become the business agent of the 
family, and have heard within this hour that papa is deep- 
ly involved. You are his creditor, are you not?” 

Meshach Milburn bowed. 

“What is the sum of papa’s notes and mortgages ? Is 
it more than he can pay by the sacrifice of everything?” 

“Yes. He has nothing to sell at forced sale which 
will bring anything, but the household servants here ; 
these maids in the family are marketable immediately. 
You would not like to sell them ?” 

“ Sell Virgie ! She was brought up with me ; what 
right have I to sell her any more than she has to sell 
me ?” 

“None,” said Milburn, bluntly, “but there is law 
for it.” 

“To sell Roxy, too, and old Aunt Hominy, and the 
young children ! how could I ever pray again if they 
were sold ? Oh ! Mr. Milburn, where was your heart, 
to let papa waste his plentiful substance in such a hope- 


THE HAT FINDS A RACK. 


59 


less experiment? If my singing in the church has given 
you happiness, why could it not move you to mercy? 
Think of the despair of this family, my father’s helpless 
generosity, my mother’s marriage settlement gone, too, 
and every other son and daughter parted from them !” 

“I never encouraged one moment Judge Custis’s ex- 
penditure,” said Meshach, “ though I lent him money. 
The first time he came to me to borrow, my mind was in 
a liberal disposition, for you had just entered it with your 
innocent attentions. I supposed he wanted a temporary 
accommodation, and I gave it to him at the lowest rate 
one Christian would charge another.” 

“You say that I influenced you to lend my father 
money? Why, sir, I was a child. He has been borrow- 
ing from you since my earliest recollections.” 

The creditor took from his breast-pocket a large leather 
wallet, and, arising, laid its contents on the table. He 
opened a piece of folded paper, and drew from it two ob- 
jects ; one a lock of blue-black hair like his own, and the 
other a pressed and faded rose. 

“This flower,” said Milburn, with reverence, “Judge 
Custis’s daughter fastened in my derided hat. I kept it 
till it was dead, and laid it away with my mother’s hair, 
the two religious objects of my life. That faded rose 
made me your father’s creditor, Miss Custis.” 

Vesta took the rose, and looked at him with surprise 
and inquiry. 

“ Oh, why did not this flower speak for us ?” she said ; 
“to open your lips after that, to save my father? Then 
you informed yourself, and knew that he was hurrying to 
destruction, but still you gave him money at higher in- 
terest.” 

Milburn looked at her with diminished courage, but 
sincerity, and answered :“ Your voice sang between us, 
Miss Custis, every time he came. I did not admit to 
myself what it was, but the feeling that I was being 


6o 


THE ENTAILED IlAf. 


drawn near you still opened my purse to your father, 
till he has drained me of the profits of years, which I 
gave him with a lavish fatality, though grasping every 
cent from every source but that. I did know, then, he 
could not probably repay me, but every Sabbath at the 
church you sang, and that seemed some compensation. 
I was bewitched ; indistinct visions of gratitude and rec- 
ognition from you filled the preaching with concourses 
of angels, all bearing your image, and hovering above me. 
The price I paid for that unuttered and ever-repelled 
hope has been princely, but never grudged, and it has 
been pure, I believe, or Heaven would have punished me. 
The more I ruined myself for your father, the more suc- 
cessful my ventures were in all other places ; if you were 
my temptation, it had the favor or forgiveness of the God 
in whose temple it was born.” 

Vesta arose also, with a frightened spirit. 

“ Do I understand you ?” she said, with her rich gray 
eyes wide open under their startled lashes. “ My father 
has spoken of a degrading condition ? Is it to love 
you ?” 

For the first time Meshach Milburn dropped his eyes. 

“ I never supposed it possible for you to love me,” he 
said, bitterly. “ I thought God might permit me some 
day to love you.” 

“Do you know what love is?” asked Vesta, with as- 
tonishment. 

“No.” 

“ How came you, then, to be interpreting my good acts 
so basely, carrying even my childhood about in your evil 
imagination, and cursing my father’s sorrow with the 
threat of his daughter’s slavery ?” 

Milburn heard with perfect humility these hard impu- 
tations. 

“You have not loved, I think, Miss Custis?” he said, 
with a slight flush. “ I have believed you never did.” 


THE HAT FINDS A RACK. 


6l 


He raised his eyes again to her face. 

“ I loved my father above everything,” faltered Vesta. 
“ I saw no man, besides, admiring my father.” 

“ Then I displaced no man’s right, coveting your image. 
Sometimes it seemed you were being kept free so long to 
reward my silent worship. I do not know what love is, 
but I know the gifts of God, as they bloom in nature, 
repel no man’s devotion. The flowers, the birds, and the 
forest, delighted my childhood ; my youth was spent in the 
study of myself and man ; at last a beautiful child ap- 
peared to me, spoke her way to my soul, and it could 
never expel her glorious presence. All things became 
subordinate to her, even avarice and success. She kept 
me a Christian, or I should have become utterly selfish ; 
she kept me humble, for what was my wealth when I 
could not enter her father’s house ! I am here by a des- 
tiny now ; the power that called you to this room, so un- 
expectedly to me, has borne us onward to the secret I 
dreaded to speak to you. Dare I go further ?” 

She was trying to keep down her insulted feelings, and 
not say something ^hat should forever exasperate her fa- 
ther’s creditor, but the possibility of marrying him was 
too tremendous to reply. 

“This moment is a great one,” continued Milburn, 
firmly, “for I feel that it is to terminate my visions of 
happiness, and of kindness as well. You have expressed 
yourself so indignantly, that I see no thought of me has 
ever lodged in your mind. Why should it have ever 
done so? Though I almost dreamed it had, because you 
filled my life so many years with your rich image, I 
thought you might have felt me, like an apparition, steal- 
ing around this dwelling often in the dark and rain, con- 
tent with the ray of light your window threw upon the 
deserted street. Now I see that I was a weak dunce, 
whose passion nature lent no nerve of hers to convey 
even to your notice. Better for me that I had hugged 


62 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


the^debasing reality of my gold, and lost my eyes to ev- 
erything but its comfort !” 

He looked towards the door. Vesta sat down in the 
fairy rocker, and detained him. 

“You have told me the feeling you think you had, 
Mr. Milburn. Poor as we Custises are now, it will not 
do to be proud. How did you ever think that feeling 
could be returned by me? My youth, my connections, 
everything, would forbid me, without haughtiness, to see 
a suitor in you. Then, you took no means to turn my at- 
tention towards you. You could have been neighborly, 
had you desired. You did not not even wear the com- 
monest emblems of a lover — ” 

She paused. Milburn said to himself : 

“ Ah ! that accursed Hat.” 

The interruption ruffled his temper : 

“ I have had reasons, also proud, Miss Custis, to be 
consistent with my perpetual self here. I will put the 
substantial merits of my case to you, since I see that I 
am not likely to make myself otherwise attractive. This 
house is already mine. The law will, ‘in a few weeks, put 
me in possession of your father’s entire property. I shall 
change outward circumstances with him in Princess Anne. 
He is too old to adopt my sacrifices, and recover his situa- 
tion ; he may find some shifting refuge with his sons and 
daughters, but, even if his spirit could brook that depend- 
ence, it would be very unnecessary, when, by marrying his 
creditor, you can retain everything he now has to make 
his family respectable. I offer you his estate as your 
marriage portion !” 

He took up from the table the notes her father had 
negotiated, and laid them in her lap. 

Vesta sat rocking slowly, and deeply agitated. She 
had in her mouth the comfort and honor of her parents, 
which she could confer in a single word. It was a re- 
sponsibility so mighty that it made her tremble. 


THE HAT FINDS A RACK. 63 

“Oh ! what shall I say?” she thought. “ It will be a 
sin to say ‘ Yes.’ To say ‘ No ’ would be a crime.” 

“You shall retain every feature of your home — your 
servants, your mother, and her undiminished portion ; 
your liberty in the fullest sense. I will contribute to 
send your father to the legislature or to congress, to sus- 
tain his pride, and keep him well occupied. The Furnace 
he may appear to have sold to me, and I will accept the 
unpopularity of closing it. I ask only to serve you, and 
inhabit your daily life, like one of these negroes you are 
kind to, and if I am ever harsh to you, Miss Vesta, I 
swear to surrender you to your family, and depart for- 
ever. 1 ’ 

Vesta shook her head. 

“There is no separation but one,” she said, “when 
Heaven has been called down to the marriage solemnity. 
It is before that act that we must consider everything. 
How could I make you happy? My own happiness I 
will dismiss. Yours must then comprehend mine. Kind- 
ness might make me grateful, but gratitude will not sat- 
isfy your love.” 

“ Yes,” exclaimed Milburn, chasing up his advantage 
with tremulous ardor; “the long famine of my heart will 
be thankful for a dry crust and a cup of ice. Here at 
the fireside let me sit and warm, and hear the rustle of 
your dress, and grow in heavenly sensibility. You will 
redeem a savage, you will save a soul !” 

“ It is not the price I must pay to do this, I would 
have you consider, sir,” Vesta replied, with her attention 
somewhat arrested by his intensity; “it is the price you 
are paying — your self-respect, perhaps — by the terms on 
which you obtain me. It may never be known out of 
this family that I married you for the sake of my father 
and mother. But how am I to prevent you from remem- 
bering it, especially when you say that I am the sum 
of your purest wishes ? If your interest would consume 


6 4 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


after you obtained me, we might, at least, be indifferent ; 
but if it grew into real love, would you not often accuse 
yourself?” 

Meshach Milburn sat down, cast his large brown eyes 
upon the floor, and listened in painful reflection. 

“You cannot conceive I have had any real love for 
you ?” he exclaimed, dubiously. 

“ You have seen me, and desired me for your wife ; 
that is all,” said Vesta, “ that I can imagine. Lawless 
power could do that anywhere. To be an obedient wife 
is the lot of woman ; but love, such as you have some 
glimmering of, is a mystic instinct so mutual, so gladden- 
ing, yet so free, that the captivity you set me in to make 
me sing to you will divide uS like the wires of a cage.” 

“There is no bird I ever caught,” said Meshach Mil- 
burn, “ that did not learn to trust me. Your comparison 
does not, therefore, discourage me. And you have al- 
ready sung for me, the saddest day of your life !” 

A slight touch of nature in this revelation of her strange 
suitor called Vesta’s attention to the study of him again. 
With her intelligence and sense of higher worth coming 
to her rescue, she thought : “ Let me see all that is of 
this Tartar, for, perhaps, there may be another way to 
his mercy.” 

As she recovered composure, however, she grew more 
beautiful in his sight, her dark, peerless charms filling the 
room, her kindling eyes conveying love, her skin like the 
wild plum’s, and her raven brows and crown of luxuriant 
hair rising upon a queenly presence worthy of an em- 
press’s throne. Such beauty almost made Milburn afraid, 
but the energies of his character were all concentred to 
secure it. 

“Who are you?” she asked, with a calm, searching 
look, cast from her highest self-respect and alert intelli- 
gence. “ Have you any relations or connections fit to 
bring here — to this house, to me ?” 


THE HAT FINDS A RACK. 


65 

“Not one that I know,” said the forester. “ I am 
nothing but myself, and what you will make of me.” 

“ Where were you born and reared ?” 

“ The house does not stand which witnessed that mis- 
ery,” spoke Milburn, with a flush of obdurate pride ; “ ft 
was burned last night, not far from the furnace which 
swallowed your father’s substance.” 

“ Why, I would be afraid of you, Mr. Milburn, if your 
errand here was not so practical. Omens and wonders 
surround you. Birds forget their natural life for you. 
Iron ceases to be occult when you take it up. Your 
birthplace in this world disappears by fire the night before 
you foreclose a mortgage upon a gentleman’s daughter. 
Is all this sorcery inseparable from that necromancer’s 
Hat you wear in Princess Anne?” 

She had touched the sensitive topic by a skilful ap- 
proach, yet he changed color, as if the allusion piqued 
him. 

“ Nature never rebuked my hat, Miss Vesta, and you 
are so like nature, it will not occupy your thoughts. I 
recollect the day you decorated my old hat ; said I : < per- 
haps this vagrant head-covering, after all its injuries and 
wanderings, may some day find a peg beneath my own 
roof, and the kind welcome of a lady like that little miss.’ 
That was several years ago, and to-day, for the first time, 
my hat is on the rack of your hall. The long wish of the 
heart is not often denied. We are not responsible for it. 
The only conspiracy I have plotted here, was that I did 
not oppose most natural occurrences, all drawing towards 
this scene. My magic was hope and humility. I dared 
to wear my ancestor’s hat in the face of a contemptuous 
and impertinent provincial public, and it gave me the 
pride to persevere till I should bring it home to honors 
and to noble shelter. If you despise my hat, you will 
despise me.” 

“ Oh, no ; Mr. Milburn ! I try never to despise any- 

5 


66 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


thing. If you wore your family hat from some filial re- 
spect, it was, in part, piety. But was that, indeed, your 
motive in being so eccentric ?” 

Milburn felt uneasy again. He hesitated, and said : 

“ In perfect truth, I fear not. There may have been 
something of revenge in my mind. I had been grossly 
insulted.” 

“ Is it not something of that revenge which instigates 
you here — even in this profession of love?” exclaimed 
Vesta, judicially. 

Meshach looked up, and the shadows cleared from his 
face. 

“ I can answer that truthfully, lady. Towards you, 
not an indignant thought has ever harbored in my brain. 
It has been the opposite : protection, worship, tender 
sensibility.” 

“ Has that exceptional charity extended to my father ?” 

“No.” 

Vesta would have been exasperated, but for his candor. 

“My father never insulted you, sir?” 

“ No, he patronized me. He meant no harm, but that 
old hat has worn a deep place in my brain through carry- 
ing it so long, and it is a subject that galls me to men- 
tion it. Yet, I must be consistent with my only eccen- 
tricity. Wherever I may go, there goes my hat ; it 
makes my identity, my inflexibility ; it achieves my prom- 
ise to myself, that men shall respect my hat before I 
die.” 

“ Pardon me,” said Vesta, not uninterested in his 
character, “ I can understand an eccentricity founded on 
family respect. We were Virginians, and that is next to 
religion there. The negroes of our family share it with 
us. You had a family, then ?” 

Milburn shook his head. 

“ No ; not a family in the sense you mean. Genera- 
tions of obscurity, a parentage only virtuous • no tomb- 


THE HAT FINDS A RACK. 67 

stone anywhere, no crest nor motto, not even a self-delud- 
ing lie of some former gentility, shaped from hand to 
hand till it commits a larceny on history, and is brazen 
on a carriage panel ! We were foresters. We came 
forth and existed and perished, like the families of ants 
upon the ant-hills of sand. We migrated no more than 
the woodpeckers in your sycamore trees, and made no 
sound in events more than their insectivorous tapping. 
Out yonder beyond Dividing Creek, in the thickets of 
small oak and low pines, many a little farm, scratched 
from the devouring forest, speckling the plains and wastes 
with huts and with little barns of logs, once bore the 
name of Milburn through all the localities of the Poco- 
moke to and beyond the great Cypress Swamp. They 
are dying, but never dead. The few who live expect no 
recognition from me, and, happy in their poverty, envy 
me nothing I have accumulated. My name has grown 
hard to them, my hat is the subject of their superstitions, 
my ambition and success have lost me their sympathy 
without giving me any other social compensation. You 
behold a desperate man, a merciless creditor, a tussock 
of ore from the bogs of Nassawongo, yet one whose only 
crimes have been to adore you, and to wear his fore- 
fathers’ hat.” 

“Is this pride, then, wholly insulted sensibility, Mr. 
Milburn?” 

“I cannot say, Miss Custis. You may smile, but I 
think it is aristocracy.” 

“ I think so, too,” exclaimed Vesta reflectively ; “ you 
are a proud man. My father, who has had reason to be 
proud, is less an aristocrat, sir, than you.” 

Milburn’s flush came and stayed a considerable while. 
He was not displeased at Vesta’s compliment, though it 
bore the nature of an accusation. 

“You are aristocratic,” explained Vesta, “because you 
adopted the obsolete hat of your people. Whatever 


68 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


vanity led you to do it, it was the satisfaction of some 
origin, I think.” . 

She checked herself, seeing that she was entering into 
his affairs with too much freedom. 

“ I suppose that somewhere, some time,” spoke the 
strange visitor, “ some person of my race has been in- 
fluential and prosperous. Indeed, I have been told so. 
He was elevated to both the magistracy and the scaf- 
fold, but my hat had even an older origin.” 

“Tell me about that ancestor,” said Vesta, the heart- 
ache from his greater errand instigating her to defer it, 
while she was yet barely conscious that the man was 
original, if not interesting. 

He told a singular tale, tracing his hat to Raleigh’s 
times and through Sir Henry Vane to America, till it 
became the property of Jacob Milborne, the popular 
martyr who was executed in New York, and his brethren 
driven into Maryland, bringing with them the harmless 
hat as their only patrimony.* 

Before he began, Milburn drew up his compact little 
figure and opened the door to the hall. The wind or 
air from some of the large, cold apartments of the long 
house, coming in by some crack or open sash, gave al- 
most a shriek, and scattered the fire in the chimney. 

Vesta felt her blood chill a moment as her visitor re- 
entered with the antediluvian hat, and placed it upon 
the table beneath the lamp. 

It had that .look of gentility victorious over decay, 
which suggested the mummy of some Pharaoh, brought 
into a drawing-room on a learned society’s night. Vesta 
repressed a smile, rising through her pain, at the gravity 
of the forester guest, who was about to demonstrate his 
aristocracy through this old hat. It seemed to her, also, 

* In the original manuscript a circumstantial story, as taken from 
Milburn’s lips, was preserved. The “ Tales of a Hat ” may be sep- 
arately published. 


HA ! HA ! THE WOOING ON’T. 69 

that the portraits of the Custises, on the wall, carried in- 
dignant noses in the air at their apparently conscious 
knowledge of the presence of some unburied pretender, 
as if, in Westminster Abbey, the effigies of the Norman 
kings had slightly aroused to feel Oliver Cromwell lying 
among them in state. 

The hat, Vesta perceived, was Flemish, such as was 
popular in England while the Netherlands was her ally 
against the house of Spain, and, stripped of its ornaments, 
was lengthened into the hat of the Puritans. 

Vesta attempted to exert her liberality and perceive 
some beauty in this hat, but the utmost she could admit 
was the tyranny of fashion over the mind — it seemed, 
over the soul itself, for this old hat, inoffensive as it was, 
weighed down her spirits like a diving-bell. 

The man, without his hat, had somewhat redeemed 
himself from low conversation and ideas, but now, that 
he brought this hat in and associated his person with it, 
she shrank from him as if he had been a triple-hatted 
Jew, peddling around the premises. 

The obnoxious hat also exercised some exciting influ- 
ence over Meshach Milburn, if his changed manner 
could be ascribed to that article, for he resumed his 
strong, wild-man’s stare, deepened and lowered his voice, 
and without waiting for any query or expression of his 
listener, told the tale. 


CHAPTER IX. 

HA ! HA ! THE WOOING ON’T. 

It was twilight when Meshach Milburn closed his 
story, and silence and pallid eve drew together in the 
Custis sitting-room, resembling the two people there, 
thinking on matrimony, the one grave as conscious ser- 


7o 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


penthood could make him, the other fluttering like the 
charmed bird. Vesta spoke first : 

“ How intense must be your head to create so many 
objects around it within the world of a hat ! You have 
only brought the story down a little way towards our 
times.” 

“ I began the tale of Raleigh out of proportion,” said 
Milburn, “ and it grew upon the same scale, like the pas- 
sion I conceived for you so intensely at the outset, that 
in the climax of this night I am scarcely begun.” 

“Yet, like Raleigh, I see the scaffold,” said Vesta, 
with an attempt at humor that for the first time broke 
her down, and she raised her hands to her face to hush 
the burst of anguish. It would not be repressed, and one 
low cry, deep with the sense of desertion and captivity, 
sounded through the deepening room and smote Mil- 
burn’s innermost heart. He obeyed an impulse he had 
not felt since his mother died, starting towards Vesta 
and throwing his arms around her, and drawing her to 
his breast. 

“Honey, honey,” he whispered, kissing her like a 
child, “don’t cry now, honey. It will break my heart.” 

The act of nature seldom is misinterpreted ; Vesta, 
having labored so long alone with this obdurate man, 
her young faculties of the head strained by the first en- 
counter beyond her strength, accepted the friendship of 
his sympathy and contrition, as if he had been her father. 
In a few moments the paroxysm of grief was past, and 
she disengaged his arms. 

“You are not merciless,” said Vesta. “Tell me what 
I must do! You have broken my father down and he 
cannot come to my help. Take pity on my inequality 
and advise me !” 

“Alas! child,” said Milburn, “my advice must be in 
my own interest, though I wish I could find your confi- 
dence. I am a poor creature, and do not know how. It 


ha! ha! the wooing on't. 71 

is you who must encourage the faith I feel starting some- 
where in this room, like a chimney swallow that would 
fain fly out. Chirrup, chirrup to it, and it may come !” 

Standing a moment, trying to collect her thoughts and 
wholly failing, Vesta accepted the confidence he held out 
to her with open arms. Blushing as she had never 
blushed in her life, though he could not know it in the 
evening dark, she walked to him and kissed him once. 

“ Will that encourage you to advise me like a friend ?” 
she said. 

“ Alas ! no,” sighed Milburn fervently, “ it makes me 
the more your unjust lover. I cannot advise you away 
from me. Oh, let me plead for myself. I love you !” 

“ Then what shall I do,” exclaimed Vesta, in low tones, 
“ if you are unable to rise to the height of my friend, 
and my father is your slave ? Do you think God can 
bless your prosperity, when you are so hard with your 
debtor ? On me the full sacrifice falls, though I never 
was in your debt consciously, and I have never to my 
remembrance wished injury to any one.” 

“ Would you accept your father’s independence at the 
expense of the most despised man in Princess Anne?” 
Milburn spoke without changing his kind tone. “ Would 
you let me give him the fruit of many years of hard toil 
and careful saving, in order that I shall be disappointed 
in the only motive of assisting him — the honorable woo- 
ing of his daughter ?” 

She felt her pride rising. 

“ Your father’s debts to me are tens of thousands of 
dollars,” continued Milburn. “ Do you ask me to pre- 
sent that sum to you, and retire to my loneliness out of 
this bright light of home and family, warmth and music, 
that you have made ? That is the test you put my love 
to : banishment from you. Will you ask it ?” 

“ I have not asked for your money, sir,” said Vesta. 
“ Yet I have heard of Love doing as much as that, re- 


72 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


lieving the anguish of its object, and finding sufficient joy 
in the self-denying deed.” 

“ I do not think you personally know of any such case, 
though you may have read it in a novel or tract. Men 
have died, and left a fortune they could no longer keep, 
to some cherished lady ; or they have made a consider- 
able sacrifice for a beautiful and noble woman ; but 
where did you ever hear, Miss Vesta, of a famished lover, 
surrendering every endowment that might win the peer- 
less one, to be himself returned to his sorrow, tortured 
still by love, and by his neighbors ridiculed ? What 
would Princess Anne say of me ? That I had been made 
a fool of, and hurl new epithets after my hat ?” 

Vesta searched her mind, thinking she must alight 
upon some such example there, but none suited the case. 
Meshach took advantage of her silence : 

“ The gifts of a lover are everywhere steps to love, 
as I have understood. He makes his impression with 
them ; they are expected. Nothing creates happiness 
like a gift, and it is an old saying that blessings await 
him who gives, and also her who takes, and that to seek 
and ask and knock are praiseworthy.” 

“ Oh,” said Vesta, “ but to be bought , Mr. Milburn ? 
To be weighed against a father’s debts — is it not degrad- 
ing?” 

“Not where such respect and cherishing as mine will 
be. Rather exalt yourself as more valuable to a miser 
than his whole lendings, and greater than all your father’s 
losses as an equivalent, and even then putting your hus- 
band in debt, being so much richer than his account.” 

“Where will be my share of love in this world, mar- 
ried so?” asked. Vesta. “To love is the ,globe itself to 
a woman, her youth the mere atmosphere thereof, her 
widowhood the perfume of that extinguished star ; and all 
my mind has been alert to discover the image I shall 
serve, the bright youth ready for me, looking on one 


HA ! HA ! THE WOOING ON*T. 73 

after another to see if it might be he, and suddenly you 
hold between me and my faith a paper with my father’s 
obligations, and say : ‘ Here is your fate ; this is your 
whole romance ; you are foreclosed upon !’ How are you 
to take a withered heart like that and find glad compan- 
ionship in it? No, you will be disappointed. It will re- 
coil upon me that I sold myself.” 

“ The image you waited for may have come,” said Mil- 
burn undauntedly, “ even in me ; for love often springs 
from an ambush, nor can you prepare the heart for it 
like a field. I recollect a fable I read of a god loving 
a woman, and he burst upon her in a shower of gold ; 
and what was that but a rich man’s wooing ? We get 
gold to equalize nobility in women ; beauty is luxurious, 
and demands adornment and a rich setting; the richest 
man in Princess Anne is not good enough for you, and 
the mere boys your mind has been filled with are more 
unworthy of being your husband than the humble creditor 
of your father. Such a creation as Miss Vesta required a 
special sacrifice and success in the character of her hus- 
band. The annual life of this peninsula could not match 
you, and a monster had to be raised to carry you away.” 

“ You are not exactly a monster,” Vesta remarked, 
with natural compassion, “ and you compliment me so 
warmly that it relieves the strain of this encounter a lit- 
tle. Do not draw a woman’s attention to your defects, 
as she might otherwise be charmed by your voice.” 

“ That also is a part of my sacrifice,” said Meshach, 
“ like the money which I have accumulated. Without a 
teacher, but love and hope, I have educated myself to be 
fit to talk to you. It is all crude now, like a crow that I 
have taught to speak, but encouragement will make me 
confident and saucy, and you will forget my sable rai- 
ment — even my hat.” 

A chilliness seemed to attend this conclusion, and 
Vesta touched her bell. Virgie, entering, took her mis- 


74 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


|| 

tress’s instructions : “ Bring a tray and tea, and lights, and 
place Mr. Milburn’s hat upon the rack !” 

The girl glanced at the antique hat with a timid light 
in her eye, but her mistress’s head was turned as if to in- 
timate that she must take it, though it might be red-hot. 
Virgie obeyed, and soon brought in the tea. 

“ It is good tea,” spoke Milburn, drinking not from 
the cup, but the saucer, while Vesta observed him oddly, 
“ and it is chill this evening. Let me start your fire !” 

He shivered a little as he stood up and walked across 
the room, and poking the charred logs into a flame ; and, 
setting on more wood, he made the walls spring into yel 
low flashes, between which Vesta saw her forefathers dart 
cold glances at her, in their gilt frames — yet how helpless 
they were, with all their respectability, to take her body 
or her father’s honor out of pawn ! — and she felt for the 
first time the hollowness of family power, except in the 
ever -preserved mail of a solvent posterity. She also 
made a long, careful survey of her suitor, to see if there 
was any apology for him as a husband. 

His figure was short, but with strength and elasticity 
in it; better clothes might fit him daintily, and Vesta re- 
dressed him in fancy with lavender kids upon his small 
hands, a ring upon his long little finger, a carnelian seal 
and a ribbon at his fob-pocket, and ruffles in his shirt- 
bosom. In place of his dull cloth suit, she would give 
him a buff vest and pearl buttons with eyelet rings, and 
white gaiters instead of those shabby green things over 
his feet, and put upon his head a neat silk hat with nar- 
row brim to raise his height slenderly, and let a coat of 
olive or dark-blue, and trousers of the same color, relieve 
his ornaments. Thus transformed, Vesta, could conceive 
a peculiar yet a passable man, whom a lady might grow 
considerate towards by much praying and striving, and 
she wondered, now, how this man had managed to soothe 
her already to that degree that she had voluntarily kissed 


HA ! HA ! THE WOOING ON’t. 


* 


75 


him. She would be afraid to do it again, but it was as 
clearly on record as that she had once put a flower in 
his hat ; and Vesta said to herself : 

“ He has power of some kind ! That story, little as I 
heard of it, was told with an opinionated confidence I 
wish my poor father had something of. Could I ever be 
happy with this man, by study and piety ? God might 
open the way, but it seems closed to me now.” 

“ The night wears on, Miss Custis,” spoke Meshach. 
“Its rewards are already great to me. When may I re- 
turn ?” 

“ I think we must determine what to do this night, Mr. 
Milburn,” Vesta said, with rising determination. “ Not 
one point nearer have we come to any solution of this 
obligation of my father. We have considered it up to 
this time as my obligation, and that may have unduly 
encouraged you. Sir, I can work for my living.” 

“You work?” repeated Milburn. 

“ Why not ? I love my father. As other women who 
are left poor work for their children or a sick husband, 
why should not I for him ! Poverty has no terrors but 
— but the loss of pride.” 

“ You hazard that, whatever happens,” said her suitor, 
“ but you will not lose it by evading the lesser evil for 
the greater. I have heard of women who fled to poverty 
from dissatisfaction with a husband, but pride survived 
and made poverty dreadful. Pride in either case in- 
creased the discontent. You should take the step which 
will let pride be absorbed in duty, if not in love.” 

“ Duty ?” thought Vesta. “ That is a reposeful word, 
better than Love. Mr. Milburn,” she said aloud, “ how 
is it my duty to do what you ask ?” 

“ I think I perceive that you have a loyal heart, a con- 
scientiousness that deceit cannot even approach. Some- 
thing has already made you slow to marriage, else, with 
your wonders, I would not have had the chance to be 


76 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


now rejected by you. Marriage has become too formida- 
ble, perhaps, to you, by the purity of your heart, the more 
so because you looked upon it to be your destiny. It is 
your fate, but you contend against it. Look upon it, then, 
as a duty, such as you expect in others — in your slave 
maid, for instance.” i 

“ Alas !” Vesta said, “ she may marry freely. I am the 
slave.” 

“ No, Miss Vesta, she has been free, but, sold among 
strangers with your father’s effects, will feel so perishing 
for sympathy and protection that love, in whatever ugly 
form it comes, will be God’s blessing to her poor heart. 
What you repel in the revulsion of fortune — the yoke of 
a husband — millions of women have bent to as if it was 
the very rainbow of promise set in heaven.” 

“ How do you know so much of women’s trials, Mr. 
Milburn ? Have you had sisters, or other ladies to 
woo ?” 

“ I have seen human nature in my little shop, not, like 
your rare nature, refined by happy fortune and descent, 
but of moderate kind, and struggling downward like a 
wounded eagle. They have come to me at first for cheaper 
articles of necessity or smaller portions than other stores 
would sell, looking on me with contempt. At last they 
have sacrificed their last slave, their last pair of shoes, 
and, when it was too late, their false pride has surren- 
dered to shelter under a negro’s hut, or dance barefooted 
in my store for a cup of whiskey.” 

“ Sir,” exclaimed Vesta indignantly, rising from her 
rocker, “ do you set this warning for me ?” 

As she rose Meshach Milburn thought his wealth was 
merely pebbles and shells to her perfection, now ani- 
mated with a queen’s spirit. 

“ Miss Vesta,” he said, “pardon me, but I have just is- 
sued from many generations of forest poverty, and know- 
ing how hard it is to break that thraldom, I would stop 


ha! ha! the wooing on’t. 


77 


you from taking the| first step towards it. The bloom 
upon your cheek, the mould you are the product of with- 
out flaw, the chaste lady’s tastes and thoughts, and in- 
born strength and joy, are the work of God’s favor to your 
family for generations. That favor he continues in lay- 
ing those family burdens on another’s shoulders, to spare 
you the toil and care, anxiety and slow decay, that this 
violent change of circumstances means. It would be a 
sin to relapse from this perfection to that penury.” 

“ I cannot see that honorable poverty would make me 
less a woman,” exclaimed Vesta. 

“You do not dread poverty because you do not know 
it,” Milburn continued. “ It grows in this region Jike 
the old field-pines and little oaks over a neglected farm. 
Once there was a court-house settlement on Dividing 
Creek, where justice, eloquence, talent, wit, and heroism 
made the social centre of two counties, but they moved 
the court-house and the forest speedily choked the spot. 
Now not an echo lingers of that former glory. You can 
save your house from being swallowed up in the forest.” 

“ By marrying the forest hero ?” Vesta said, though she 
immediately regretted it. 

“Yes,” Milburn uttered stubbornly, after a pause. “ I 
have met the house of Custis half-way. I am coming 
out of the woods as they are going in, unless the sacrifice 
be mutual. 

“ Let us not be personal,” Vesta pleaded, with her grace 
of sorrow ; “ I feel that you are a kind man, at least to me, 
but a poor girl must make a struggle for herself.” 

She saw the tears stand instantly in his eyes, and 
pressed her advantage : 

“ Your tears are like the springs we find here, so close 
under the flinty sand that nobody would suspect them, 
but I have seen them trickle out. Tell me, now, if I 
would not be happier to take up the burden of my father 
and mother, and let us diminish and be frugal, instead 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


78 

of cowardly flying into the protection of our creditor, by 
a union which the world, at least, would pronounce mer- 
cenary. My father might come up again, in some way.” 

“ No, Miss Vesta. Your father can hold no property 
while any portion of his debts remains unpaid. The 
easier way is to show the world that our union is not 
mercenary, by trying to love each other. Throughout 
the earth marriage is the reparation of ruined families — 
the short path, and the most natural one, too. Ruth was 
poor kin, but she turned from the harvest stubble that 
made her beautiful feet bleed, to crawl to the feet of old 
Boaz and find wifely rest, and her wisdom of choice we 
sing in the psalms of King David, and hear in the prov- 
erbs of King Solomon, sons of her sons.” 

“ I am not thinking of myself, God knows!” said Vesta. 
“ Gladly could I teach a little school, or be a governess 
somewhere, or, like our connection, the mother of Wash- 
ington, ride afield in my sun-bonnet and straw hat and 
oversee the laborers.” 

“That never made General Washington, Miss Vesta. 
It was marriage that lent him to the world ; first, his 
half-brother’s marriage with the Fairfaxes ; next, his own 
with Custis’s rich widow. Had they been looking for 
natural parts only, some Daniel Morgan or Ethan Allen 
would have been Washington’s commander.” 

“Why do you draw me to you by awakening the mo- 
tive of my self-love?” asked Vesta. “That is not the 
way to preserve my heart as you would have it.” 

“ In every way I can draw you to me,” spoke Milburn, 
again trembling with earnestness, “ I feel desperate to 
try. If it is wrong, it arises from my sense of self-pres- 
ervation. Without you I am a dismal failure, and my 
labor in life is thrown away.” 

“ Do you really believe you love me ? Is it not ambi- 
tion of some kind ; perhaps a social ambition ?” 

“To marry a Custis?” Milburn exclaimed. “No, it 


HA ! HA ! THE WOOING ON’T. 


79 

is to marry you . I would rather you were not a Cus- 
tis.” 

“ Ah ! I see, sir Vesta’s face flushed with some ad- 
miration for the man; “you think your family name is 
quite as good. So you ought to do. Then you love me 
from a passion ?” 

“ Partly that,” answered Milburn. “ I love you from 
my whole temperament, whatever it is ; from the glow of 
youth and the reflection of manhood, from appreciation 
of you, and from worship, also ; from the eye and the 
mind. I love you in the vision of domestic settlement, 
in the companionship of thought, in the partition of my 
ambition, in my instinct for cultivation. I love you, too, 
with the ardor of a lover, stronger than all, because I 
must possess you to possess myself ; because you kindle 
flame in me, and my humanity of pity is trampled down 
by my humanity of desire ; I cannot hear your appeal to 
escape ! I am deaf to sentiments of honor and courtesy, 
if they let you slip me ! Give yourself to me, and these 
better angels may prevail, being perhaps accessory to the 
mighty instinct I obey at the command of the Creator!” 

As he proceeded, Vesta saw shine in Meshach Mil- 
burn’s face the very ecstacy of love. His dark, resinous 
eyes were like forest ponds flashing at night under the 
torches of negro ’coon-hunters. His long lady’s hands 
trembled as he stretched them towards her to clasp her, 
and she saw upon his brow and in his open nostril and 
firm mouth the presence of a will that seldom fails, when 
exerted mightily, to reduce a woman’s, and make her rec- 
ognize her lord. 

Yet, with this strong excitement of mental and animal 
love, which generally animates man to eloquence, if not 
to beauty, a weary something, nearly like pain, marked 
the bold intruder, and a quiver, not like will and courage, 
went through his frame. It was this which touched Vesta 
with the sense that perhaps she was not the only sufferer 


8o 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


there, and pity, which saves many a lover when his mer- 
its could not win, brought the Judge’s daughter to an im- 
pulsive determination. 

“ Mr. Milburn,” she said at last, pressing her hands to 
her head, “ this day’s trials have been too much for my 
brain. Never, in all my life together, have I had reali- 
ties like these to contend with. I am worn out. Nay, 
sir, do not touch me now !” He had tried to repeat his 
sympathetic overture, and pet her in his arms. “ Let us 
end this conflict at once. You say you will marry me; 
when?” 

“ It is yours to say when, Miss Custis. I am ready 
any day.” 

“ And you will give me every note and obligation of 
my father, so that my mother’s portion shall be returned 
to her in full, and this house, servants, and demesnes be 
mine in my own right?” 

“ Yes,” said Milburn ; “ I have such confidence in your 
truth and virtue that you shall keep these papers from 
this moment until the marriage-day.” 

“ It will not be long, then,” Vesta said, looking at Mil- 
burn with a will and authority fully equal to his own. 
“Will you take me to-night?” 

“ To-night ?” he repeated. “ Not to-night, surely ?” 

“To-night, or probably never.” 

He drew nearer, so as to look into her countenance by 
the strong firelight. Calm courage, that would die, like 
Joan of Arc in the flames, met his inquiry. 

“Yes,” said Milburn, “at your command I will take 
you to-night, though it is a surprise to me.” 

He flinched a little, nevertheless, his qonscience being 
uneasy, and the same trembling Vesta had already ob- 
served went through his frame again. 

“ What will the world say to your marriage after a sin- 
gle day’s acquaintance with me ?” 

“Nothing,” Vesta answered, “except that I am your 


HA ! HA ! THE WOOING ON’T. 


8l 


wife. That will, at least, silence advice and prevent in- 
trusion. If I delay, these forebodings may prevail, if not 
with me, with my family, some of whom are to be feared.” 

He seemed to have no curiosity on that subject, only 
saying : 

“ It is you, dear child, I am thinking of — whether this 
haste will not be repented, or become a subject of re- 
proach to yourself. To me it cannot be, having no world, 
no tribe — only myself and you !” 

Vesta came forward and lifted his hand, which was 
cold. 

“I believe that you love me,” she said. “I believe 
this hand has the lines of a gentleman. Now, I will 
trust to you a family confidence. The troubles of this 
house are like a fire which there is no other way of treat- 
ing than to put it out at once. My father will not be dis- 
turbed, beyond his secret pain, at the step I am to take, 
for he appreciates your talents and success. It is for him 
I shall take this step, if I take it at all, and I have yet 
an hour to reflect. But my mother will be resentful, and 
her brothers and kindred in Baltimore will express a 
savage rage, in the first place, at my father’s losing her 
portion ; next to that, and I hope less bitterly, they will 
resent my marriage to you. Exposed to their interfer- 
ence, I might be restrained from going to my father’s as- 
sistance ; they might even force me away, and break our 
family up, leaving father alone to encounter his miseries.” 

“I see,” said Milburn; “you would give me the legal 
right to meet your mother’s excited people.” 

“ Not that merely,” Vesta said ; “ I would put it out of 
her power and theirs to prevent the sacrifice I meditate 
making. My father’s immediate dread is my mother’s 
upbraiding — that he has risked and lost her money. It 
has sent her to bed already, sick and almost violent. I 
might as well save the poor gentleman his whole distress, 
if I am to save him a part.” 


6 


82 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“Brave girl !” exclaimed Meshach Milburn, in admira- 
tion. “It is true, then, that blood will tell. You intend 
to give your mother the money which has been lost, and 
silence her complaint before she makes it ?” 

“Just that, Mr. Milburn, and to say, ‘It is my hus- 
band’s gift, and a peace-offering from us all.’” 

“ Is it not your intention, honey,” asked the creditor, 
“to take Mrs. Custis into your confidence before this 
marriage ?” 

She looked at him with the entreaty of one in doubt, 
who would be resolved. “ Advise me,” she said. “ I 
want to do the best for all, and spare all bitter words, 
which rankle so long. Is it necessary to tell my mother?” 

“No. You are a free woman. I know your age— 
though I shall forget it by and by.” This first gleam of 
humor rather became his strange face. “ If you tell your 
father, it is enough.” 

“ I hope I am doing right,” Vesta said, “ and now I 
shall take my hour to my soul and my Saviour. Sir, do 
you ever pray ?” 

Milburn recoiled a little. 

“ I do not pray like you,” he replied ; “ my prayers are 
dry things. I do say a little rhyme over that my mother 
taught me in the forest.” 

“Try to pray for me to do right,” said Vesta, “that I 
may not make this sacrifice, and leave a wounded con- 
science. And now, sir, farewell. At nine o’clock go to 
our church and wait. If I resolve to come, there you 
will find the rector, and all the arrangements made. If 
I do not come, I think you will see me no more.” 

“ Oh, beautiful spirit,” exclaimed her lover, “ oppress 
me not with that fear !” 

“ If another way is made plain to me,” Vesta said, “ I 
shall go that way. If my duty leads me to you again, 
you will be my master. Sir, though your errand here 
was a severe one, I thank you for your sincerity and the 


MASTER IN THE KITCHEN. 83 

kind consideration you seem to have had for me so long. 
Farewell. ” 

“ Angel ! Vesta ! Honey !” Milburn cried, “may I kiss 
you ?” 

“Not now,” she answered, cold as superiority, and in- 
terposing her hand. 

The door stood wide open, and the slave-girl, Virgie, 
in it, holding the Entailed Hat. Milburn, with a shud- 
der, took it, and covered himself, and departed. 


Chapter X. 

MASTER IN THE KITCHEN. 

The kitchen had been a scene of anything but culi- 
nary peace and savor during the long visit of the owner 
of the hat. 

Aunt Hominy and the little darkeys had made three 
stolen visits to the hall to peep at the dreadful thing 
hanging there, as if it were a trap of some kind, liable to 
drop a spring and catch somebody, or to explode like a 
mortar or torpedo. As hour after hour wore on, and 
Miss Vesta did not reappear, and finally rang her bell for 
tea, Aunt Hominy was beside herself with superstition. 

“Honey,” she exclaimed to Virgie, “jess you take in 
dis yer dried lizzer an’ dis cammermile, an’ drap de lizzer 
in dat ole hat, an’ sprinkle de flo’ whar ole Meshach sots 
wi’ de cammermile, an’ say ‘ Shoo !’ Maybe it’ll spile 
his measurin’ of Miss Vessy in.” 

“ No, aunty, if old Meshach measured me in, I wouldn’t 
make the family ashamed before him. Miss Vessy is 
powerful wise, and maybe she’ll get the better of that 
wicked hat.” 

“Yes,” said Roxy, “she’s good, Aunt Hominy, an’ 
says her prayers every night and mornin’. I’ve heard 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


84 

tell that witches can’t hear the Lord’s name, and stay, no- 
how. Maybe Miss Vessy’ll say in Meshach’s old hat : 
‘Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, bless the bed that I 
lie on.’ That’ll make the old devil jess fly up an’ away.” 

“ No, gals,” insisted Aunt Hominy, “ cammermile is 
all dat’ll keep him from a-measurin’ of us in. Don’t ole 
Meshach go to church, too, and hab a prayer-book an’ — 
listen dar, honey ! ef she ain’t a singin’ to him !” 

As Virgie answered the bell, Aunt Hominy took down 
her cherished camomile and sprinkled the little chil- 
dren, and gave them each a glass of sassafras beer to 
bless their insides. 

“Lord a bless ’em!” exclaimed the old lady, “ef de 
slave-buyer comes, Aunt Hominy’ll take ’em to de woods 
an’ jess git los’, an’ live on teaberries, slippery - ellum, 
haws, an’ chincapins. We don’t gwyn stay an’ let ole 
Meshach starve us like a lizzer.” 

“ Aunt Hominy,” said Roxy, “ maybe, old lady, ef you 
bake a nice loaf of Federal bread, or a game-pie, or a per- 
simmon custard, an’ send it to ole Meshach, he won’t 
sell us to the slave-buyers. He never gets nothing good 
to eat, an’ don’t know what it is. A little taste of it’ll 
make him want mo’.” 

“Roxy, gal,” said Aunt Hominy, “ I’d jess like to make 
a dumplin’-bag out o’ dat steeple-hat he got. When I 
skinned de dumplin’ de hat would be bad spiled, chillen, 
an’ den de Judge would git his lan’ back dat Meshach’s 
measured in. For de Judge would say, ‘ Meshach, ye 
hain’t measured me fair. Wha’s yer yard-stick, ole deb- 
bil ?’ Den Meshach he say, ‘ De hat I tuk it in wid, done 
gone burnt by dat ole Hominy, makin’ of her puddin’s.’ 
‘Den,’ says de Judge, ‘ye ain’t measured me squar. I 
won’t play. Take it all back !’ Chillen, we must git dat 
ar ole hat, or de slave-buyers done take us all.” 

They started to take another peep of cupidity and 
awe at the storied hat, when Virgie emerged from the 


MASTER IN THE KITCHEN. 85 

parlor door with the dreaded article in her hand, and, 
hanging it on the peg, came with superstitious fear and 
relief into the colonnade. Aunt Hominy hurried her to 
the kitchen, strewed her with herb-dust, waved a rattle of 
snake’s teeth in a pig’s weazen over her head, and ended 
by pushing a sweet piece of preserved watermelon-rind 
down her throat. 

“ Did it hurt ye, honey ?” inquired Aunt Hominy, with 
her eyes full of excitement, referring to the hat. 

“ ’Deed I don’t know, aunty,” Virgie answered; “all I 
saw was Miss Vessy, looking away from me, as if she might 
be going to be ashamed of me, an’ I picked the thing up 
an’ took it to the rack ; an’ all I know is, it smelled old, 
like some of the old-clothes chests up in the garret, when 
we lift the lid and peep in, an’ it seems as if they were 
dead people’s clothes.” 

The little negroes, Ned, Vince, and Phillis, heard this 
with shining eyes, and dived their heads under Aunt 
Hominy’s skirts and apron, while the old woman ex- 
claimed : 

“ De Lord a massy !” and began to blow what she 
•called “pow-pow” on the girl’s profaned fingers. 

“ I don’t believe it’s anything, aunty, but an ugly, old, 
nasty, dead folks’ hat,” exclaimed Virgie. “ He just wears 
it to plague people. He was drinking tea just like Miss 
Vessy, but I thought his teeth chattered a little, as if he 
had smelt of the old hat, and it give him a chill.” 

“Where did he get the hat, Aunt Hominy?” Roxy 
asked. “ Did he dig it up somewhere ?” 

The question seemed to spur the cook's easy inven- 
tion, and, after a cunning yet credulous look up and 
down the large kitchen, where the pale light at the win- 
dows was invisible in the stronger fire beneath the great 
stack chimney, Aunt Hominy whispered : 

“ He dug dat hat up in ole Rehoboff ruined church- 
yard. He foun’ it in de grave.” 


86 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ But you said this afternoon, aunty, that the Bad Man 
gave it to him.” 

“De debbil met him right dar,” insisted Aunt Hom- 
iny, “in dat ole obergrown churchyard, whar de hymns 
ob God used to be raised befo’ de debbil got it. He says 
to Meshach : ‘ I make yoy de sexton hyar. Go git de 
spade out yonder, whar de dead-house used to be, an’ dig 
among de graves under de myrtle-vines, an’ fin’ my hat. 
As long as ye keep de Lord an’ de singin’ away from dis 
yer big forsaken church, you may keep dat hat to measure 
in eberybody’s lanV So nobody kin sing or pray in dat 
church. Nobody but Meshach Milburn ever prays dar. 
He goes dar sometimes wid his Chrismas-giff on he head, 
an’ prays to de debbil.” 

Thus does an unwonted fashion arouse unwonted vis- 
ions, as if it brought to the present day the phantoms 
which were laid at rest with itself, and they walked into 
simple minds, and produced superstition there. 

Aunt Hominy never was stimulated to inventions of 
this kind, but she immediately absorbed them, and they 
became religious beliefs with her. Her manner, highly 
animated by her terror and belief, produced more and* 
more superstition in the minds of the girls and children, 
and the conversation fell off, — the little negroes wander- 
ing hither and thither, unable to sleep, yet unable to at- 
tract sufficient attention from any one, till Judge Custis, 
who had been waiting for hours for his creditor to go, 
slipped down the back stairs in his old slippers, and 
came to the kitchen among the colored people for com- 
pany’s sake. 

His fine presence, and familiar, if superior, address, put 
a new complexion at once on the African end of the 
house. 

He picked up all the children by twos or threes, woolled 
them, chased them, tossed them, and drove the lurid im- 
ages of Aunt Hominy’s mind out of their spirits, and then 


MASTER IN THE KITCHEN. 87 

caught the two young girls, and set Roxy on his shoul- 
der, and caught Virgie by the waist, and finally piled 
them on Aunt Hominy, who ran behind her biscuit-block, 
and he bunched all the children upon the party. 

“De Lord a massy, Judge !” exclaimed Aunt Hominy, 
delighted, and showing her white teeth, whichever side 
she revealed. “Go ’long, Judge, Missy Custis ketch you ! 
Miss Vessy’s a-comin’, befor’ de Lawd !” 

The children were screaming, getting into the riot 
more, while pretending to try to get out, invading the 
Judge’s back, and rubbing their clean wool into his 
whiskers, and the two neat servants, brought up like 
white children in his family, were not unaccustomed to 
either jovial handling or petting from their master, which 
he commonly concluded by a present of some kind. 

“Old woman,” said the Judge to Aunt Hominy, “can 
you give me a bit of broiled something for my stomach ? 
I want to eat it right here.” 

“ Ha ! yah ! Don’t got nothin’ but a young chicken, 
marster! Mebbe 1 kin git ye a squab outen de pigeon- 
house in de gable-yend.” 

“ That’s it, Hominy !” exclaimed Judge Custis ; “ a ten- 
der squab, a little toast in cream, a glass of morning milk, 
and a bunch of fresh celery, will just raise my pulse, and 
put courage into me. Get it, my faithful old girl ; it’s the 
last I may ask of you, for old Samson Hat is going to 
own you next.” 

“ Me ? No, sah ! I’ll run away from Prencess Anne 
fust. De man dat cleans ole Meshach Milburn’s debbil 
hat sha’n’t nebber hab me.” 

“ Well, it’ll be one of you. If you don’t take Samson, 
Roxy must, or Virgie. The old fellow will be very in- 
fluential with our new master, and, Hominy, we’re all de- 
pending on you to make him so comfortable that he will 
just keep the family together.” 

Sobriety came in on this attempted witticism, and 


88 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


the old cook saw a film grow into the Judge’s smiling 
eyes. 

“ Old marster !” she exclaimed, raising her hands, 
“you’s jess a-sottin’ dar, an’ breakin’ your poor heart. 
Don’t I know when you is a-makin’ believe ? Mebbe dis 
night is de las’ we’ll ever see you in your own warm, nice 
kitchen, an’ never mo’, dear ole marster, kin Hominy 
brile you a bird or season de soup you like. Bless God, 
dis time we’ll git de squab an’ de celery an’ de toast, 
befo’ ole Meshach Milburn measures all we got in !” 

While the children crawled around the Judge’s knees, 
setting up a dismal wail to see him sob, the two neat 
house girls, forgetting every contingency to themselves, 
sobbed also, like his own daughters, to see him un- 
manned ; but Aunt Hominy only felt desperately ener- 
getic at the chance to cook the last supper of the Custis 
household. 

She lighted a brand of pine in the fire, and started one 
of the stable boys up a ladder by its light to ransack the 
pigeon-cote, and in a very little while both a chicken and 
a bird were broiled and set upon the kitchen-table upon 
a spotless cloth, and the plume of lily-white celery, and 
the smoking toast in velvet cream, warmed the Judge’s 
nostrils, and dried his tears. 

Roxy stood behind him to wait upon his wishes ; Vir- 
gie subdued every expression of grief, and comforted the 
children, and poor Aunt Hominy, with silent tears stream- 
ing down her cheeks to see him eat and suffer, kept up 
a clatter of epicurean talk, lest he might turn and see 
her miserable. As he finished his meal, and took out 
his gold tooth-pick, and felt a comfortable joy of such 
misery and sympathy, Vesta opened the door, and said : 

“ Papa !” 

“ My child ?” 

“Let me speak with you.” 

Judge Custis rose, and raised his hands to Aunt Horn' 


DYING PRIDE. 


g 9 

iny in speechless recognition of her service ; but not till 
the door closed behind him did the old cook’s cry burst 
through her quivering lips : 

“ Oh ! chillen, chillen, he’ll never eat no mo’ like dat 
again. Ole Meshach’s measured him in !” 


Chapter XI. 

DYING PRIDE. 

At the termination of Milburn’s long visit, Vesta had 
gone to her own room, and read her passage in the Bible, 
and said her prayer, and tried to think, but the day’s ap- 
plication had been too great to leave her mind its morn- 
ing energy, when health, which is so much of decision, 
was elastic in her veins and brain. 

She began to see her duty loom up like a prodigious 
thing on one side, crowding every other consideration 
out of the way but one — her modesty ; and threatening 
that, which, like a little mouse, ran around and around 
her mind, timorous, but helpless, and without a hole of 
escape. 

She would cease to be a maid within the circuit of 
the clock, or forsake her family, and drive that great 
bloodhound of duty over the threshold of her ruined 
home. 

In the one case lay outward devastation — the red eyes 
of parents and servants who had not slept all night, and 
looked at her as their obdurate hostage, and the prying 
constables lodged upon the premises to see that nothing 
was smuggled out, the ring of the auctioneer’s bell, and 
the fingering of boors and old gossips over the cherished 
things of the family, even to her heirlooms, jewelry, and 
hosiery; the vast old house a hollow barn when these 
were done, and she and her mother visitors at the jail 


9 o 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


where her poor father looked through the bars, and bent 
his head in shame ! 

Then the servants, one after another, mounted upon 
the court-house block, the old gray servitors mocked, the 
little children parted, like calves by the butcher, and the 
young girls feeling the desperate apprehensions of abuse 
and violation, that were the other alternative to herself, 
with whom purity was like the whiteness of the lily, 
prized more than its beauty of form or its perfume. 

She glanced in her mirror by the light that flamed in 
her brazen grate, and saw the blushes climb like flying 
virgins at the sack of towns, up the white ramparts of her 
neck and temples. 

The form which had altered so little from childhood, 
supple and straight, and moulded to perfection, was to 
fall like the young hickory-tree in the August hurricane, 
twisted from its native grove. The breath of the man 
she was to yield her life to, irresistible and hot as that 
storm, she had felt already, when he held her for a mo- 
ment in his arms in the transport of passion, a‘nd heard 
his fearless avowal of desire. 

To marry any man now seemed hard ; to marry this 
one was inexpressible shame, and at the thought of it 
she could not shed a tear, such paralysis came over her. 
She had read of the recent Greek revolution, where ele- 
gant ladies of Scio, and other isles of the iEgean Sea, 
educated in the best seminaries of Europe, had been sold 
by thousands as common slaves in the markets of Con- 
stantinople, and carried to their estates by brutal Turks, 
with all the gloating anticipation of lust and tyranny. 

On this vivid episode started a procession of all the 
ages of women who had been the sport of conquest since 
their common mother, -Eve, lost Paradise by her simplicity, 
the Jewish maidens carried to Babylon, the Gothic virgins 
dragged at the horse-tails of the Moors, the daughters of 
Palestine and Byzantium consigned to Arab sensualists, 


DYING PRIDE. 


91 


and made to follow their nomadic tents, and the almond- 
eyed damsels of China surrendered by their parents to 
the wild Kalmucks, to be beaten and starved on every 
cold plain of Asia, till life was laid down with neither 
hope nor fear. 

“ I am happier than millions of my sex,” Vesta said ; 
“ my captor does not despise me, at least. Perhaps he 
will treat me kinder than I think, and give me time 
to draw towards him without this deadly pain and 
shame.” 

Then she almost repented of her hasty decision to 
marry this night, instead of after longer acquaintance, 
which Mr. Milburn, no doubt, would have granted, and 
his words were remembered with accusation : “ What 
will the world say to your marriage after a single day’s 
acquaintance with me?” “Will this haste not be re- 
pented, or become a subject of reproach to you ?” Was 
it too \a.te to recall her words, and ask for delay? 

“ No,” thought Vesta, “ I am to keep, at least, my mind 
maiden and chaste, instead of playing the unstable co- 
quette with that. I will not let him begin to think me 
weak and changeful already.” 

To see if there was the least glimmer of relief from 
this marriage Vesta crossed to her mother’s room, and 
found Mrs. Custis with her head wrapped in handker- 
chiefs steeped in cologne, and a vial of laudanum in her 
hand, and in a condition bordering on hysteria. 

“ Mamma,” said poor Vesta, “ are you in pain ?” 

“Oh!” screamed Mrs. Custis, “I am just dying here 
of cruelty and brutality. Your father is a villain. I’ll 
have that rascal, Milburn, killed. Go get me ink and 
paper, daughter, and sit here and write me a letter to my 
brother, Allan McLane, in Baltimore. He shall settle 
with Judge Custis for this robbery, and take you and me 
back to Baltimore, leaving your father to go to the alms- 
house or the jail, I don’t care which.” 


92 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Mother,” exclaimed Vesta, “ what a sin ! to abuse 
poor father now in all his trouble !” 

“Trouble!” echoed Mrs. Custis, mockingly, “what 
trouble has he had, I would like to know? Living in 
the woods like a Turk among his barefooted forest con- 
cubines ! Spending my money, raked and scraped by 
my poor father in the sugar importation, to make pud- 
dle iron out of the swamp, and be considered a smart 
man ! The family is broken up. We are paupers, and 
now ‘it is save yourself.’ I’ll take care of you if I 
can, but your father may starve for any aid I will give 
him.” 

“ Then he shall have the only aid in my power, moth- 
er,” said Vesta, decisively. 

“Your aid!” Mrs. Custis exclaimed. “What have 
you got? Your jewels, I suppose? How long will they 
keep him ? You had better keep your jewels, girl, for 
your wedding, and have it come quickly, for marriage is 
now your only salvation.” 

“ My last jewel shall go, then,” Vesta said, with a pale 
resolution that darted through her veins like ice. 

“ Save your jewels,” Mrs. Custis continued, “ and 
choose a husband before this thing is noised abroad! 
You have a good large list to select from. There is your 
cousin, Chase McLane, crazy for you, and with an estate 
in Kent. There is that young fool Carroll, with thousands 
of acres on the western shore, and the widower Hynson 
of King George, Virginia, with eighty slaves and his sta- 
bles full of race-horses. You can marry any of these 
Dennis boys, or take Captain Ringgold of Frederick, 
who lives in elegance at West Point, or be mistress of 
Tench Purvience’s mansion on Monument Square in 
Baltimore. All you have to do is to write a letter, say- 
ing: ‘I expect you,’ or, what is better, take to-morrow’s 
steamer for Baltimore and use your Uncle Allan’s house 
and become engaged and married there.” 


DYING PRIDE. 


93 


“Mamma,” Vesta spoke without rebuke, only with a 
sad, confirmed feeling of her destiny, “ I could be capable 
of deceiving any of those gentlemen if I could so heart- 
lessly leave my father.” 

“ Deceiving !” Mrs. Custis remarked, filling her palm 
and brow with the cologne. “What is man’s whole work 
with a woman but deceit? To court her for her money, 
to kiss her into taking her money out of good mortgages 
and putting it into bog iron ore ? To tell her when past 
middle life that she has nothing to live upon, except the 
charity of the public, or her reluctant friends. All this 
for an experiment! The Custis family are all knaves or 
fools. Your father is a monster.” 

Vesta went to her mother’s side and bathed her fore- 
head. 

“Dear mamma,” she said, “let you and I do something 
for ourselves, while papa looks around and finds some- 
thing to do. We can rent a house in Princess Anne and 
open a seminary. I can teach French and music, you 
can be the matron and do the correspondence and busi- 
ness, and if papa is at a loss for larger occupation he can 
lecture on history and science. Our friends will send 
their children to us, and we shall never be separated. I 
will give up the thought of marriage and live for you 
two.” 

Mrs. Custis made a gesture of impatience. 

“ And be an old maid !” she blurted. “ That is insuf- 
ferable. What are all these accomplishments and 
charms for but a husband, and what is he for but to 
provide bread and clothes. Don’t be as crazy as your 
unprincipled father! Try no experiments! Drop phi- 
lanthropy ! Money is the foundation of all respectability.” 

Vesta thought to herself: “Can that be so? Does it 
not, then, justify the man who solicits me in his means of 
getting money ? Mother ” — Vesta spoke — “ you would 
have me marry, then ?” 


94 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


♦ 

“ There is no would about it,” answered Mrs. Custis. 
“You ?nust marry!” 

“ Marry immediately ?” 

“ Yes, the sooner the better, to a rich man. Have you 
picked out one ?” 

“Give me your blessing, and I will try,” Vesta said; 
“ I think I know such a one.” 

Mrs. Custis kissed her daughter, and moaned about 
her poor head and lost marriage portion, and Vesta set 
out to look for her father. 

She found him as described, in the luxury of tears and 
squab, as comfortable among his negro servants as in the 
state legislature or at the head of society, and they wrap- 
ped up in his condescension and misfortunes. 

As Vesta saw the curious scene of such patriarchal de- 
mocracy in the old kitchen, she wondered if that voluptu- 
ous endowment of her father was not the happy provision 
to make marriage unions tolerable, and social revulsions 
philosophical. Something of regret that she had not 
more of the animal faintly grew upon her sad smile when 
she considered that wherever her father went he made 
welcome and warmth, as she already felt at the picture 
of him, after parting with her apathetic mother. 

“ Roxy,” said Vesta, as she left the kitchen, “ do you 
. go up to my mother and stay with her all this night. 
Make your spread there beside her bed. Virgie, put on 
your hood and carry a letter for me, — I will write it in the 
library.” 

She sat before her father, he too undecided to speak, 
and seeing by her fixed expression that it was no time 
for loquacity. She sealed the letter with wax, and, Virgie 
coming in, her father heard the direction she gave with 
curiosity greater than his embarrassment : 

“Take this to Rev. William Tilghman. Give it to 
him only, and see that he reads it, Virgie, before you 
leave him. If he asks you any questions, tell him please 


DYING PRIDE. 95 

to do precisely what this note says, and, as he is my 
friend, not to disappoint me.” 

The girl’s steps were hardly out of hearing when Vesta 
opened the drawer of the library-table and took out a 
package of papers tied with a string. She unloosed it, 
and her father recognized from where he sat his notes of 
hand and mortgages. 

“Gracious God, my darling!” exclaimed Judge Custis, 
“ how came you by those papers ?” 

“ They are to be mine to-night, father — in one hour. 
The moment they become mine they will be yours.” 

“ Why, Vessy,” said the Judge, “ if they are yours even 
to keep a minute, the shortest way with them is up the 
chimney !” 

He made a stride forward to take them from her hand. 
She laid them in her lap and looked at him so calmly 
that he stopped. 

“ You may burn the house, papa,” she said, “ it is still 
your own. But these papers you could only burn by a 
crime. It would be cheating an honorable man.” 

“ Honorable ! Who ?” the Judge exclaimed. 

“ He who is to be my husband.” 

“You marry Meshach Milburn !” shouted the Judge, 
“O curse of God ! — not him ?” 

“Yes, this night,” answered Vesta ; “ I respect him. I 
hold these obligations by his trust in me. They are my 
engagement ring.” 

Judge Custis raised a loud howl like a man into whom 
a nail is driven, and fell at his daughter’s feet and clasped 
her knees. 

“ This is to torture me,” he cried ; “ he has not dared 
to ask you, Vesta ?” 

“Yes, and my word is passed, father. Shall that word, 
the word of a Custis, be less than a Milburn’s faith. By 
the love he bore me, Mr. Milburn gave me these debts for 
my dower — a rare faith in one so prudent. If I do not 
marry him, they will be given back to him this night.” 


96 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Then give them back, my child, and save your soul and 
your purity, lest I live to be cursed with the sight of my 
noble daughter’s shame ? This marriage will be unholy, 
and the censure to follow it will be the bankruptcy of 
more than our estate — of our simple fame and old family 
respect. We have friends left who would help us. If 
you marry Milburn, they will all despise and repudiate 
us.” 

“I do not believe it,” said Vesta. “The sense and 
courage of that gentleman — he is a gentleman, for I have 
seen him, and a gentleman of many gifts — will compel 
respect even where false pride and family pretension ap- 
pear to put him down. Who that underrates him will 
make any considerable sacrifice to assist us ? Your sons, 
— will they do it? Then by what right do they decide 
my marriage choice? No, father, I only do my part to 
support our house in its extremity, as these gentlemen 
and others have done before.” 

She pointed to the old portraits of Custises on the wall. 
If any of them looked dissatisfied, he met a countenance 
haughty as his own. 

“ Vesta,” her father called, “you know you do not love 
this man?” 

Looking back a minute at the longing in his face, 
which now wore the solicitude of personal affection, she 
melted under it. 

“No, father,” she said, with a burst of tears. “ I love 
you.” 

She threw her arms around him and kissed him long 
and fondly, both weeping together. He went into a fit of 
grief that admitted of no conversation till it was partly 
spent, and at last lay with his gray hairs folded to 
her heaving bosom, where the compensation of his love 
made her sacrifice more precious. 

“ I feel that I am doing right, father,” she said tenderly. 
“ Till now I have had my doubts. No other young heart 


DYING PRIDE. 


97 


is wronged by my taking this step; I have never been 
engaged, and it now seems providential, as I could not 
then have gone to your assistance without injuring my- 
self and another ; and your debts are too great for any but 
this man to settle them. Your life has been one long 
sacrifice for me, and not a cloud has darkened above me 
till this day, giving me the first shower of sorrow, which 1 
trust will refresh my soul, and make its humility grow. 
Oh, father, it would rejoice me so much if you could re- 
spond to my sacrifice with a better life !” 

“ God help me, I will !” he sobbed. 

“ That is very comforting to me. I will not enumerate 
your omissions, dear father, but if this important step in 
my life does not arrest some sad tendencies I see in you, 
the disappointment may break me down. Intemperance 
in you — a judge, a gentleman, a husband, and a father 
— is a deformity worse than Mr. Milburn’s honest, un- 
fashionable hat. Do you not feel happier that my hus- 
band is not to be a drunkard ?” 

“ He has not that vice, thank God !” admitted the 
Judge. 

“ Be his better example, father, for I hope to see you 
influence him to be kind to me, and the sight of you 
walking downward in his view will degrade me more 
than bearing his name or sharing his eccentricities. Oh, 
if you love me, let not your dear soul slide out of the 
knowledge of God !” 

“Pray Tor me, dear child! My feet are slippery and 
my knees are weak.” 

“Begin from this moment to lean on Heaven,” said 
Vesta. “ It is better than this world’s consideration. 
Oh, what would strengthen me now but God’s approval, 
though I go into a captivity I dreamed not of. Even 
there I can take my harp beneath the willows, like them 
in Babylon, and praise my Maker.” 

She sat at her piano and sang the hymn the young 

7 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


98 

consumptive, Rev. Mr. Eastburn, composed in her grand- 
father’s house, taking it from the Episcopal collection : 

“ O holy, holy, holy Lord ! 

Bright in Thy deeds and in Thy name, 

Forever be Thy name adored, 

Thy glories let the world proclaim ! 

“ O Jesus, Lamb once crucified 
To take our load of sins away, 

Thine be the hymn that rolls its tide 
Along the realms of upper day ! 

“ O Holy Spirit from above, 

In streams of light and glory given, 

Thou source of ecstacy and love, 

Thy praises ring through earth and heaven !” 

As her voice in almost supernatural clearness and sweet- 
ness filled the two large rooms, and died away in melody, 
she rose and kissed her father again, and said, “ Courage, 
love ! we shall be happy still.” 

A knock at the door and there entered the young 
clergyman she had sent for, a sandy-haired, large-blue- 
eyed, boyish person, with a fair skin easily freckled, and 
a look of youthful chivalry under his sincere Christian 
humility. 

“Good-evening, William,” Vesta spoke ; “I did not ex- 
pect to see you till we reached the church. But sit, and 
I will answer your questions. Father, you are to go with 
me to the church — you and Virgie. Mr. Tilghman is to 
marry us.” 

“ Now, Vesta,” spoke the young man, as her father left 
the room, “ whom are you going to marry, cousin, in such 
haste as this ?” 

“ Did you have the church made ready, William, as I 
requested ?” 

“ I did. The sexton is there now, lighting the fire.” 

“ I thought you were loyal as ever, William, and de- 


DYING PRIDE. 


99 


pended upon you. Thanks, dear friend ! I am to marry 
Mr. Meshach Milburn at nine o’clock.” 

A cloud came over the young man’s serene face, though 
his features retained their habitual sweetness. 

“ I can marry you, cousin, even to Meshach Milburn,” 
he said, “if that is your wish. Why do you marry 
him ?” 

“ It is not loyal in you to ask, William, but I will give 
you this answer : he has asked me. He is also devoted 
and rich. To avoid excitement, possibly some opposi- 
tion, though it would be vain, we are to be married with- 
out further notice, and papa is to give me away.” 

Silent for a moment, the young rector exclaimed : 

“ Cousin Vesta, have I lived to see you a mercenary 
woman? Has this man’s asserted wealth found you cold 
enough to want it, when love has been so generously of- 
fered you by almost every young man of station in this 
region, and from abroad — even by me ?” he said, after a 
pause. “The scar is on my heart yet, cousin. No, I 
will not believe such a thing of you. There is a reason 
back of the fact.” 

“ William, if you respected me as you once said you 
ever would, like your sister, you would not add this night 
the weight of your doubt to my other_burdens, but take 
my hand with all the strength of yours, and lift me on- 
ward.” 

“ I will,” said the rector, swallowing a dry spot in his 
throat. “ Though it was a bitter time I had when you re- 
fused me, cousin, the pain led me to my vows at the altar 
where I minister, and I have had the assistance of your 
beautiful music there, like the angel I seem to have seen 
reserved for me, in place of you, sitting at your side. And 
I know that this marriage is, on your part, pure as my 
sister’s. No further will I inquire — what penalty you are 
paying for another, what mystery I cannot pierce.” 

He raised his hands above her head : “ The peace of 


IOO 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


God that passeth understanding, abide with you, dear sis- 
ter, forever !” 

He went out with his eyes filled with tears, but hers 
were full of heavenly light, feeling his benediction to be 
righteous. 


Chapter XII. 

PRINCESS ANNE FOLKS. 

The Washington Tavern, or, rather, the brick sidewalk 
which came up to its doors, and was the lounging-place 
for all the grown loiterers in Princess Anne, had been in 
the greatest activity all that Saturday afternoon, since it 
was reported by Jack Wonnell, who set himself to be a 
spy on Meshach’s errand, that the steeple-hat had dis- 
appeared in the broad mansion of Judge Daniel Custis. 

Jack Wonnell had a worn bell-crown on his head, ex- 
posed to all kinds of weather, as he was ift the habit of 
fishing in these beaver -hats, and never owned an um- 
brella in his life. He lived near Meshach, in the old 
part of Princess Anne, near the bridge, and was the 
subject of the money-lender’s scorn and contempt, as 
tending to make a mutual eccentricity ridiculous. Mil- 
burn had been willing to be hated for his hat, but Jack 
Wonnell made all unseasonable hats laughable, the more 
so that he was nearly as old a wearer of his bell-crowns 
as Milburn of the steeple-top. Although he had no such 
reasons of reverence and stern consistency as his rich 
neighbor, he seemed to have, in his own mind, and in 
plain people’s, a better defence for violating the standard 
taste of dress. 

The people said that Jack Wonnell, being a poor man, 
could not buy all the fashions, and was merely wearing 
out a bargain ; that he knew he was ridiculous, and set 
no such conceit on his absurdity as that grim Milburn ; 


PRINCESS ANNE FOLKS. 


IOI 


and they rather enjoyed his playing the Dromio to that 
Antipholus, and turning into farce the comedy of Me- 
shach’s error. 

Jack Wonnell had partly embraced his bargain by the 
example of Meshach. A frivolous, unambitious, childish 
fellow, amusing people, obliging people, running errands, 
driving stage, gardening, fishing, playing with the lads, 
courting poor white bound girls, incontinent, inoffensive, 
he had been impelled to bid off his lot of old hats by 
Jimmy Phcebus saying : 

“Jack, dirt cheap ! Last you all your life ! Better hats 
than old Meshach Milburn’s. You’ll drive his’n out of 
town.” 

To his infinite amusement and dignity, his appearance 
in the bell-crown hats attracted the severe regard of Mil- 
burn, and set the little town on a grin. The joke went 
on till Jimmy Phcebus, Judge Custis, and some others 
prompted Jack Wonnell, with the promise of a gallon of 
whiskey, to ask Meshach to trade the steeple-top for the 
bell-crown. The intense look of outrage and hate, with 
the accompanying menace his townsman returned, really 
frightened Jack, and he had prudently avoided Milburn 
ever since, while keeping as close a watch upon his 
movements and whereabouts as upon some incited bull- 
dog, liable to appear anywhere. 

In this way Jack Wonnell had followed Meshach to 
the court-house corner, where stood Judge Custis’s brick 
bank — which, of late, had done little discounting — and, 
from the open space between it and the court-house in 
its rear, he peeped after Milburn up the main cross 
street, called Prince William Street, which stopped right 
at Judge Custis’s gate. There, in the quiet of early after- 
noon, he heard the knocker sound, saw the door open, 
and beheld the Entailed Hat disappear in the great door- 
way. Then, scarcely believing himself, Wonnell ran back 
to the tavern, and exclaimed : 


102 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ May I be struck stone dead ef ole Meshach ain’t 
gwyn in to the Jedge’s !” 

“You’re a liar !” said Jimmy Phoebus, promptly, catch' 
ing Jack by the back of the neck, and pushing his belb 
crown down till it mashed over his nose and eyes. “ What 
do you mean by tellin’ a splurge like that ?” 

“I seen him, Jimmy,” was the bell-crowned hero’s 
smothered cry; “if I didn’t, hope I may die!” 

“ What did he go there for ?” 

“I can’t tell, Jimmy, to save my life !” 

“ Whoo-oo-p !” cried Phoebus, waving his old straw bat, 
itself nearly out of season. “If this is a lie, Jack Won- 
nell, I’ll make you eat a raw fish. Levin”— to Levin 
Dennis — “you slip up by Custis’s, and see if ole Me- 
shach hain’t passed around the fence, or dropped along 
Church Street and hid in the graveyard, where he some- 
times goes. I’ll stay yer, and make Jack Wonnell ac- 
count for sech lyin’ !” * 

Levin Dennis, a boyish, curly-haired, graceful-going or- 
phan, walked up the cross street, passing Church lane 
and the Back alley, and slowly turned the long front of 
Teackle Hall, and went out the parallel street towards 
the lower bridge on the DeiTs Island road, till he could 
turn and see the three great -chimneyed buildings of 
Teackle Hall lifting their gables and lightning-rods to 
his sight in their reverse, the partly stripped trees allow- 
ing that manorial pile to stand forth in much of its length 
and imposing proportions. Lest he might not be sus- 
pected of curiosity, Levin continued on to the bridge at 
Manokin landing, and counted the geese come out of a 
lawn pn a willowy cape there, and take to water like a 
fleet of white schooners. He ascended the rise beyond 
the bridge, and looked over to see if Meshach might 
have taken a walk down the road. Then returning, he 
swept the back view of Princess Anne, from the low bluff 
of cedars on another inhabited cape on the right, which 


PRINCESS ANNE FOLKS. 


I03 


bordered the Manokin marshes, to the vale of the little 
river at the left, as it descended between Meshach’s 
storehouse and the ancient Presbyterian church of the 
Head of Manokin, seated among its gravestones between 
its hitching-stalls and its respectable parsonage manse. 
Nothing was visible of the owner of the distinguishing 
hat. # 

So Levin Dennis returned more slowly around the 
north wing of Teackle Hall, looking at every window, 
as if Meshach might be there ; but nothing did he see 
except the dog, which, to Levin’s eye, appeared uneasy, 
and ran out of the gate to make friends with him. 

“ So, Turk !” Dennis muttered, patting the dog’s head, 
“ no wonder you’re scared, boy, to see old Meshach Mil- 
burn come in.” 

Teackle Hall, according to rumor, was built at the close 
of the revolutionary war by an uncle, or grand-uncle, of 
Judge Custis, who came from Virginia, somewhere between 
Accomac and Northampton counties, and went into ship- 
building on the Manokin, adding some privateering and 
banking, too, and once, going abroad, he brought back 
from some ducal residence the plan of Teackle Hall, as 
Judge Custis found it on his coming into the property. 

It. was nearly two hundred feet in length, and would 
have made three respectable churches, standing in line, 
with their sharp gables to the front, the bold wings con- 
nected with the bolder centre by habitable curtains or 
colonnades, in which panels of slate or grained stone 
made an attic story above the lines of windows, and 
lintels and sills of the same stone, with high keystones, 
capped every window in the many-sided surface of the 
whole stately block, all built of brick brought over in 
vessels from the western shore, or possibly from the 
North, or Europe, and painted a gray stone color. 

Its central gable had deep carved eaves, and a pedi- 
ment-base to shed rain, and a large circular window in 


104 the entailed hat. 

that pediment. The two mighty chimneys of that centre 
were parallel with the ridge of the roof, and rose nearly 
from the middle of the two opposite slopes, bespeaking 
four great fireplaces below, and a flat, low-galleried ob- 
servatory upon the roof gave views of portions of the 
bay on clear days. 

The wings of Teackle Hall had similar, but lower, 
chimneys, astraddle of their roofs, and forest trees — oak, 
gum, holly, and pine, with a great willow, and some tawny 
cedars, and bushes of rose and lilac — dotted the grassy 
lawn. The Virginia creeper and wild ivy climbed here 
and there to the upper windows, and a tall, broad, pan- 
elled doorway, opening on a low, open portico platform 
with steps, seemed to say to visitors : “ Men of port and 
consideration come in this way, but inferiors enter by 
some of the smaller doors !” 

Levin Dennis, who had never sounded that knocker, 
though he had often taken his terrapins to the kitchen, 
stared in concern at the door where it was reported Me- 
shach Milburn had gone in, and would hardly have been 
surprised if that intruder had now appeared at one of the 
three deep windows over the door with a firebrand in his 
hand. 

Levin muttered to himself: “Rich folks, I reckon, 
must make a trade. Maybe it’s hosses — maybe not. I 
know it ain’t hats.” 

He then turned down to the Episcopal Church, only a 
square from Teackle Hall, and on a street between it 
and the main street, though in a retired situation, its 
front turned from the town, and looking over the fields 
and farms, like a good pastor who is warming at the fire 
with his hands behind him. 

A single - storied, long, low edifice of British bricks, 
with its semicircular choir next the street, and, adjoining 
the choir, a spire of more modern brickwork built up to 
an open bell cupola, and open ribbed dome, also of brick, 


PRINCESS ANNE FOLKS. 


105 

tipped with a gilded cross, the ivy was greenly matted 
all round the choir, and ran along the side of the church, 
where Levin Dennis walked under four tall, round-topped 
windows of stained and wired glass, till he came to the 
end gable or front of the church, standing in unworldly 
contemplation of the graveyard and the back fields. 

There, since the Stamp Act Congress, or when Prin- 
cess Anne was not half a century old, the old church had 
taken its stand, backed up to the town, recluse from its 
gossip. Between its tall round doors, with little win- 
dow-panes like spectacles let into their panels, the ivy 
vine arose in form like the print of The Crucified, reach- 
ing out its stems and tendrils wide of the one glorified 
window in the gable, in whose red dyes glimmered the tri- 
umph of a bloody countenance. The mossy walls, often 
scraped, the mossified pavement, the greenish tombs of 
marble under the maples and firs, showed the effect of 
shade, solitude, and humidity upon all things of brick in 
this climate, where wood was already rising into favor as 
building material, but to the detraction of picturesque- 
ness and all the appearance of antiquity. 

No sign of the unpopular townsman was to be seen 
anywhere, but, as Levin Dennis peeked around the foliage 
in the yard he beheld a man he had never observed be- 
fore, and of a tall, bearded, suspicious, and ruffianly ex- 
terior, lying flat on the top of a memorial vault, with 
his head and feet half concealed in some cedar bram- 
bles. 

“ Hallo !” Dennis shouted. 

“What do you hallo for?” spoke the man; “don’t you 
never come to a churchyard to git yer sins forgive ?” 

“ No,” said the terrapin-finder, “ not till I knows I has 
some sins.” 

“ What air you prowlin’ about the church then fur, 
anyhow ?” demanded the stranger, standing up in his 
boots, into which his trousers were tucked ; and he stood 


io6 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


such a straight, long-limbed, lithe giant of a man that 
Levin saw he could never run away, even if the intruder 
meant to chew him up right there. 

“ I ain’t a prowlin’, friend,” answered Levin Dennis. 
“ I was jess a lookin’.” 

“Lookin’ fur what, fur which, fur who?” said the man, 
taking a step towards Dennis, who felt himself to be no 
bigger than one of the other’s long, ditch-leaping, good- 
for-wading legs. 

“ Why, I was jess a follerin’ a man — that is, friend, not 
’zackly a man, but a hat.” 

“ A hat ?” The man walked up to Dennis this time, and 
stood over him like a pine-tree over a sucker. “Yer’s 
yer hat,” pulling an old straw article, over-worn, from 
Dennis’s head. “ No wind’s a blowin’ to blow hats into 
graveyards. Or did you set yer hat under a hen in yere, 
by a stiffy ?” 

Dennis looked up, laughing, though not all at ease, but 
his amiable want of either intelligence or fear, which be- 
long near together, made his most natural reply to the 
pertinacious intruder a disarming grin. 

“No, man,” Dennis said, “it was a hat on a man’s 
head — ole Meshach Milburn’s steeple-top. I was a fol- 
lerin’ of him.” 

“ Stow your wid !” the man clapped the hat back on 
Levin’s head. “You’re a poor hobb, anyhow. Is thair 
any niggers to sell hereby ?” 

“ Oh, that’s your trade, nigger buyin’ ? Well, there’s 
mighty few niggers to sell in Prencess Anne. Unless” — 
here a flash of intelligence shone in Levin’s eyes — “un- 
less that’s what’s took ole Meshach Mllburn to Jedge 
Custis’s. He goes nowhar unless there’s trouble or 
money for him” 

“And where is Judge Custis’s, you rum chub?” 

“Yander!” pointing to Teackle Hall. 

“Ha! that is a Judge’s? And niggers? Broke, too ! 


PRINCESS ANNE FOLKS. I07 

Well, it’s no hank for a napper bloke. So bingavast ! 
Git ! Whar’s the tavern ?” 

“ I’m a-goin’ right thair,” answered Levin, much re- 
lieved. “ You must be a Yankee, or some other furriner, 
sir.” 

“ No, hobb ! I’m workin’ my lay back to Delaware 
from Norfolk, by pungy to Somers’s cove. Show me to 
the tavern and I’ll sluice your gob. I’ll treat you to 
swig.” 

At the prospect of a drink, of which he was too fond, 
Levin led the way to the Washington Tavern, where there 
was a material addition to the attendance since Jimmy 
Phoebus had called to every passer-by that Meshach Mil- 
burn, on the testimony of Jack Wonnell, had actually 
been and gone and disappeared in Judge Custis’s door- 
way, and nearly a dozen townsfolks were now discussing 
the why and wherefore, when, suddenly, Levin Dennis 
came out of Church Street with a man over six feet high, 
of a prodigious pair of legs, and arms nearly as long, with 
a cold, challenging, yet restless pair of blue eyes, and 
with reddish-brown beard and hair, coarse and stringy. 
The free negro, Samson Hat, being a little way off, was 
observed to cast a beaming glance of admiration at the 
athletic proportions of the stranger, who looked as if he 
might shoulder an ox, or outrun a horse. 

“ Hallo !” exclaimed Jimmy Phoebus, looking the 
stranger over boldly, yet with indifference, at last. “You’re 
cuttin’ a splurge, Levin, too. Where’s Meshach ?” 

“Can’t see no sign of him, Jimmy. Guess Jack Won- 
nell hit it, an’ he’s gone in the Jedge’s. Mebbe he’s buyin’ 
of Jedge Custis’s niggers. That’s this gentleman’s busi- 
ness.” 

Jimmy Phoebus, himself no slight specimen of a man, 
gave another glance at the stranger from the black cher- 
ries of his eyes, and, apparently no better satisfied with 
the inspection, made no sign of acquaintance. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


xoS 

“Whoever ain’t too nice to drink with a nigger buyer,” 
said the man, independently, “ can come in and set up 
his drink, with my redge, for I’m rhino-fat and just rot- 
ten with flush.” 

There was a pause for somebody to take the initiative, 
but Jimmy Phoebus, turning his big, broad Greekish face 
and small forehead on the stranger, remarked : 

“ I never tuk a drink with a nigger buyer yit, and, by 
smoke ! I reckon I’m too old to begin.” 

The man stopped and measured Jimmy up in his eye. 

“ Humph !” he said with a sneer, “ you look to be a 
little more than half nigger yourself. If I was dead 
broke I’d run you to market an’ git my price for you.” 

“ No doubt of it whatever, as fur as you’re concerned,” 
said Jimmy, unexcited, while the man pushed Levin Den- 
nis in towards the bar. 

Either the new movement of Meshach Milburn, or the 
example of the strange man, set Princess Anne in a tipsy 
condition that day. The stranger was full of money, and 
treating indiscriminately, and the pavement before the 
hotel was continually beset with the loiterers, and the 
bar took money and spread mischief. So when, an hour 
after dark, the unpopular townsman, avoiding the crowd, 
passed by on the opposite side of the street, nearest his 
own lodging, one of the loudest and most unanimous 
yells he had ever heard in his experience, rang out from 
the Washington Tavern. 

“ Steeple -top ! Steeple -top! Old Meshach’s loose. 
Whoo-o-op !” 

“ Laugh on !” thought Meshach, “ till now I never knew 
the meaning of ‘ let them laugh who win.’’” 

He felt confirmed in his idea to be married in the 
Raleigh tile, and when he saw Samson Hat, Milburn 
said : “ Boy, brush all my clothing well. Then go back 
to the livery stable, and order a buggy to be ready for 
you at ten o’clock. At that hour set out for Berlin, 


PRINCESS ANNE FOLKS. 


109 


and bring back Rhody Holland with you in the morn- 
ing.” 

“ It’s more dan thirty mile, marster, an’ a sandy road.” 

“ No matter. Take it slow. I will write you a letter 
to carry. Samson, I am going to be married to-night to 
the rose of Princess Anne.” 

“ Dar’s on’y one,” said Samson. “ Not Miss Vesty 
Custis ?” 

“ Yes, Samson. Princess Anne may now have some- 
thing to howl at. The poor girl may be lonesome, as, 
no doubt, she will be dropped everywhere on my ac- 
count, and not a soul can I think of, to be my young 
lady’s maid, unless it is Rhody.” 

“ Yes, Marster, wid all your money you’re pore in 
friends ; in women-friends you is starved.” 

“You may go with me to the church,” said Meshach, 
“ I suppose you want to see me married.” 

“Yes, sir. Dat I do! Wouldn’t miss dat fo’ my 
Christmas gift. I ’spect dat gal Virgie will come wid 
Miss Vesty to de cer’mony, marster.” 

“Perhaps so. You are not thinking of love, too, Sam- 
son ?” 

“ Well, don’t know, marster. Virgie’s a fine gal^ho’. 
I am a little old, Marster Milburn, but I’ll have to look 
out for myseff, I ’spec, now you done burnt down my 
spreein’ place. Dar’s a wife cornin’ in yar now. So if 
you don’t speak a good word fur me wid some o’ Miss 
Vesty’s gals, I’m aboot done.” 

“Well, boy,” Meshach said, “you have got the same 
chance I had : the upper hand. I owe you a nice little 
sum in wages, and you may be able to buy one of the 
Custis housemaids, and set her free, and marry her, or, 
be her owner. You are a free man.” 

Samson shook his head gravely. 

“Dat won’t do among niggers,” he said. “Niggers 
never kin play de upper hand in love, like white peo- 


I IO 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


pie. Dey has to do it by love itseff: by kindness, mars- 
ter.” 

Before nine o’clock Milburn and his negro left the old 
store by the town bridge, and passing by the river lane 
called Front Street, into Church Street, walked back of 
the hotel, avoiding its triflers, and reached the church in 
a few minutes unobserved. The long windows shed some 
light, however, but as it was Saturday night, this was at- 
tributed, by the few who noticed it, to preparations for 
the next Sabbath morning. Before setting out, Samson 
Hat, observing his employer to shake a trifle, asked him 
if a dram of whiskey would not be proper. 

“ No, boy ; this is a wedding without wine. I shall 
need all my wits to find my manners.” 

He entered the church, and found it warmed, and the 
minister already present in his surplice, kneeling alone 
at the altar. Mr. Tilghman arose, with his youthful face 
very pale, and tears upon his cheeks, and seeing his neg- 
lected parishioner and the serving-man, came down the 
aisle. 

“ Mr. Milburn,” he said, extending his hand, “ I hope 
to congratulate, after this ceremony, a Christian-hearted 
bridegroom, and one who will take the rare charge which 
has fallen to him, in tender keeping. My endeavor shall 
be to love you, sir, if you will let me ! Miss Vesta is the 
priestess of Princess Anne, and if you take her from our 
sight and hearing, even God’s ministrations in this church 
will seem hollow, I fear.” 

“ To me they would,” said Milburn, “ though from no 
disrespect to our pastor.” 

“You have been a faithful parishioner,”, resumed Tilgh- 
man, “ during my brief labor here, as in my boyhood, 
when I little dreamed I should fill that desk. You know, 
perhaps, that it was from the hopeless love of my cousin 
Custis, I fled to God for consolation, and he made me 
his humble minister.” 


PRINCESS ANNE FOLKS. 


Ill 


“ I have heard so,” said Milburn ; “ or, rather, I have 
seen so.” 

“ Pardon my mentioning a subject so irrelevant to you, 
sir, but, though I have surrendered every vain emotion 
for my cousin, her happiness is a part of my religion, and 
this sudden conclusion of her marriage, about which I 
have asked only one question, has urged me to throw my- 
self upon your sympathy.” 

“ What d@ you ask, William Tilghman ? No matter — 
your request is granted.” 

“ How have I won your favor ?” the young rector asked, 
somewhat surprised. 

Milburn mechanically picked his hat from a pew, and 
held it a little way up. 

“ You were the only boy in this village who never cried 
after this hat.” 

“ Then it was probably overlooked by me. I was like 
the other boys, mischievous, before my spirits had been 
depressed by unhappy love, and I did not know I was 
any exception to their habits.” 

“It was grateful to see that exception,” said Milburn; 
“hooted people make fine distinctions.” 

“ Oh, Mr. Milburn, forgive the boys ! They are made 
for laughter, and little causes excite it, like dogs to bark, 
from health and exercise — scarcely more than that. The 
request I make is to let me be your friend, because I 
have been your wife’s! Frankness becomes my calling, 
and I think you need friendly, cordial surroundings to 
bring out your usefulness, and give you the freedom that 
will take constraint out of your family life, and, without 
diminishing your good sensibilities, dispel any morbid 
ones. This will open a way for Vesta to see her domestic 
career, which, otherwise, might become so rapidly con- 
tracted as to disappoint you both. You have seen her 
the idol of her wide circle, free as a bird, indulged by her 
kind, and by Providence also, till joy and grace, beauty 


1 1 2 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


and health, faith and hope live abundant in her, and you 
are the beneficiary of it all. Her society hereafter you 
must control. May I become your friend, and let my 
love for your wife recommend me to your confidence, as 
you to mine and to my prayers ?” 

“ Have I another friend already ?” exclaimed Milburn, 
his voice quivering. “What wealth she brings me never 
known before ! William, you will be ever welcome to me.” 

They clasped hands upon it, and old Samson Hat, sit- 
ting back, was heard to chuckle aloud such a warming 
laugh, that Meshach’s response to it, in a sudden pallid 
shivering, seemed slightly out of keeping. He was re- 
called, however, by the entrance of Judge Custis with his 
daughter, and her maid,Virgie. 

Vesta was very pale, but neither shrinking nor negative. 
On the contrary, she supported her father rather than 
received his support, and Milburn saw the Judge’s worn, 
helpless face, with the pride faded from it, and pity for his 
daughter absorbing every other feeling of depression. 

He wore his best cloth suit, with the coat tails falling 
to his knees behind, the body cut square to the hips, and 
the collar raised high upon his stock of white enamelled 
English leather. His low -buttoned vest exposed his 
shirt-buttons of crystal and gilt, and a ruffle, ironed by 
Roxy’s slender hands with nimble touches, parted down 
the middle like sea foam on shell, and similar ruffles at 
the wrists were clasped by chain buttons of pearl and 
silver. His vest was of figured Marseilles stuff, and 
gaiters of the same material partly covered his shoes; 
and his heavy seal, with his coat of arms upon it, fell 
from a pale ribbon at his fob. Debtor -though he was, 
and answering at the bar of the church to a heavy per- 
sonal and family judgment, his large and flowing lines of 
body, deeply cut chin, full eyes, and natural height and 
grace of stature made him a marked and noble presence 
anywhere. 


PRINCESS ANNE FOLKS. 113 

Vesta Custis, dropping off a mantle of blue velvet at a 
touch of her maid, stood in a party dress of white silk, 
the neck, shoulders, and arms bare ; and, as she halted a 
minute in the aisle, Virgie struck the cloth sandals from 
her mistress’s white slippers of silk, and, removing her 
hood of home-embroidered cloth, a veil of white fell to 
her train. The dingy light from the lamps of whale-oil 
gathered, like poor folks’ children’s marvelling eyes, 
around the pair of diamonds in her delicately moulded, 
but alert and generous ears. Her fine gold watch-chain, 
twice dependent from her neck, disappeared in the snowy 
mould of her bosom, on whose heaving drift swam a mag- 
nolia-bud and blossom, each with a leaf. Her father’s 
picture, in a careful miniature set in pearls, lay higher 
on her breast, fastened by a pearl necklace. Her hands 
were covered with white gloves, and her arms were with- 
out ornament. Her hair, dropping in dark ringlets around 
her forehead and temples, was combed upward farther 
back, and then gathered around a pearl comb in high 
braids, and the plentiful loops drooped to her shoul- 
der. 

Milburn glanced at the treasures of her peerless bod- 
ily charms, never till now revealed to his sight, and their 
splendor almost made him afraid. 

Never had he been at a theatre, a ball, or anywhere 
from which he could have foreseen a swan-like neck and 
bosom sculptured like these, and arms as white as the 
limbs of the silver-maple, and warmed with bridal-life 
and modesty. 

Her lips, parted and red, her great rich eyes a goddess 
might have commanded through, with their eyebrows of 
raven-black, like entrances to the caves of the Cumaean 
sibyl, her small head borne as easily upon her neck as a 
dove upon a sprig — all flashed upon Milburn’s thrilled 
yet flinching soul, as the revelation of a divinity. 

As she stepped forward he spoke to her with that bold 
8 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


114 

instinct or ecstasy she had observed when she first ad- 
dressed him in her father’s house, ten hours before. 

“ You have dressed yourself for me ?” he said. 

“ Sir, such as I could command upon this necessity I 
thought to do you honor with.” 

“For me, to look so beautiful! what can I say? You 
are very lovely !” 

“ It is gracious of you to praise me. Shall we wait, 
or are you ready ?” 

He gave her his hand, unable to speak again, and she 
was calm enough to notice that his hand was now hot, as 
if he had fever. Her father, at her side, reached out also, 
and took the bridegroom’s other hand : 

“ Milburn,” he said, huskily, “ this is no work of mine. 
My daughter has my consent only because it is her will.” 

“ The nobler to me for that,” Milburn spoke, with his 
countenance strangely flushed. “ What shall we do, my 
lady ?” 

“ Give me you arm ; not that one. This is right. Have 
you brought a ring, sir ?” 

“Yes.” He drew from his vest pocket a little, lean 
gold ring, worth hardly half a dollar. 

“ It was my poor mother’s,” he said. 

Without another word she walked forward, her arm 
drawing him on, Virgie following, and her father bring- 
ing up the rear. Samson Hat, feeling uneasy at being 
awarded no part in the ceremony, slipped up the aisle as 
far as the big, stiff-aproned stove in the middle of the 
church, behind which he ducked his body, but kept his 
head and faculties in the centre of the events. 

Mr. Tilghman had preceded them in his surplice, and 
taking his place at the altar, with his countenance pale 
as death, he read the exordium in an altered voice : 
“ Dearly beloved, we are gathered together here, and in 
the face of this company, to join together this man and 
this woman in holy matrimony.” 


PRINCESS ANNE FOLKS. 


TI S 


“ What 4 company’ is here ?” thought Vesta. “ Not alone 
these poor negroes and my father ; no, I feel behind me, 
looking on, the generations of our pride and helpless 
ease, the worthy younger suitors I have been too exact- 
ing and particular to see the consideration and merits of, 
the golden hours I might have improved my mind in, with 
brilliant opportunities I was not jealous of, and which 
will be mine no more, because I had not trimmed my 
virgin lamp ; and so I slept away my girlhood, till now I 
awaken at the cry, ‘ The bridegroom cometh,’ and I be- 
hold ! Yes, I have been a foolish virgin, and am surprised 
when my fate is here ! Perhaps my guardian angel also 
stands behind me, the cross advanced that I must take, 
my crown concealed ; but somewhere, midway of this 
journey of life, she may give it to me, and say, ‘ Well 
done !’ ” 

“This ‘company,’” thought Milburn, with swimming 
head, “gathered to see me marry! what company? I 
seem to feel, besides these negroes, my sole spectators, 
the populous forest peering on, the barefoot generations, 
the illiterate broods, the instinctive parents, the sandy 
graves. They give forth my lost tribe, and all cry at me, 
‘Go, leave us, proud one! despiser, go!’ Yet there is 
one I see, pure as my bride, white as my captive’s bos- 
om, her soul all in her believing eyes, and saying, ‘ Oh, 
my son, it is a woman like me that has come into your 
life, and her heart is very tender, and, by your moth- 
er’s dying love ! be kind to the poor stranger you have 
bought.’ ” 

He answered, “I will !” aloud, and it seemed almost a 
miraculous coincidence that it was a response to the min- 
ister’s question, till he heard the corresponding inquiry 
put to his bride in the clergyman’s low, but gentlest, 
tones : 

“ Wilt thou obey him, and serve him, love, honor, and 
keep him, in sickness and in health ; and forsaking all 


1 16 THE ENTAILED HAT. 

others, keep thee only unto him, so long as ye both shall 
live ?” 

“I will !” spoke the Judge’s daughter, clear as music, 
and the Judge drew a long, deep sigh, saturated with 
tears, as if from the deepest wells of grief. 

He could not distinctly answer, as he joined her hand 
to the minister’s. The minister lost his office and speech 
for a moment, joining her hand to the bridegroom’s. The 
slave-girl burst into a wail she could not control, and only 
Vesta stood calm as her bridegroom, putting her cool, 
moist hand in his palm of fire, and waited to repeat the 
Church’s deliberate language. 

When both had made this solemn promise, she reached 
for the little ring, and gave it to her old lover, the min- 
ister, and Virgie loosed her glove. Mr. Tilghman, his 
tears silently falling upon his book, passed the ring to 
Meshach, and saw its tiny circle hoop her white finger 
round, no bigger than a straw, yet formidable as the mar- 
tyr’s chain. His prayers were said with deep feeling, 
and he pronounced them man and wife. Then, shaking 
Meshach’s hand, he said, with his boyish countenance 
bright as faith could make it : 

“My friend, may I take my kiss?” 

Meshach nodded his head, but his face was like a ball 
of fire, and he hardly knew what was asked. Mr. Tilgh- 
man kissed Vesta, saying, 

“Cousin, your husband is my friend, and love and 
friendship both surround you now. May your happiness 
be, like your goodness, securest when you surmount diffi- 
culties, like those birds that cannot float at perfect grace 
till they have struggled above the clouds.” 

“ May I kiss you now ?” Milburn said, gazing with a 
wild look upon her rich eyes. 

As she obediently raised her lips, a strange, warm, 
husky breath, not natural nor even passionate, came from 
his nostrils. The Judge, looking at this — no pleasing 


PRINCESS ANNE FOLKS. 


117 

scene to him, the fairest Custis in two hundred years be- 
ing devoured before his sight — exclaimed within his 
soul, 

“Is Meshach drinking? His eyes look fiery.” 

So, after kissing his daughter also, and saying, “ May 
God reward you with triumphs and compensation beyond 
our fears !” the Judge said : 

“ Milburn, I suppose, in the sudden conclusion of this 
union, you have made no arrangements as to where you 
will go ; so come, of course, to Teackle Hall, and make 
it your home.” 

“ Is that your wish, my dear one?” 

Vesta replied, “ Yes. But it is yours to choose, sir.” 

“You have some business with your father for an hour,” 
Milburn said ; “ meantime, I require something at my 
warehouse, and, as it is yet early in the night, may I 
leave you a little while ?” 

She bowed her head -again, and, while they proceeded 
towards the church-door, lingering there, Samson took 
the opportunity to seize both of Virgie’s hands. 

“ Virgie,” he exclaimed, “is all dat kissin a gwyin on 
an’ we black folks git none of it ? Come hyeah, purty 
gal, an’ kiss yer ole gran’fadder !” 

Virgie consented without resistance, till Samson con- 
tinued, “Oh, what peach an’ honey, Virgie ! Gi me an- 
oder one ! I say, Virgie, sence my marster an’ your mis- 
tis have done gone an’ leff us two orphans, sposen we git 
Mr. Tilghman to pernounce us man an’ wife, too ?” Then 
Virgie drew away. 

“Samson Hat,” she said, “what’s that you are talking 
about ? You ought to be ashamed of yourself. You are 
old enough to be my father !” 

“ ’Deed I ain’t, my love. I’m good as four o’ dese new 
kine o’ Somoset County beaux. I’m a free man. May- 
be I’ll sot you free too, Virgie — me an’ my marster yon- 
der. He says we better git married. ’Deed he does.” 


n8 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


‘‘You are just an impertinent old negro,” the girl re- 
plied. “ Do you suppose any well-raised girl would have a 
man who got rich by cleaning the Bad Man’s hat ? You’re 
nothing but the devil’s serving-man, sir.” 

“ Look out dat debbil don’t ketch you, den,” said Sam- 
son. “ You pore, foolish, believin’ chile ! Look out dem 
purty black eyes don’t cry for ole Samson yit. He’s done 
bound to marry some spring chicken, ole Samson is, an’ 
I reckon you’ll brile de tenderest, Virgie.” 

Virgie, indignant, but fluttered at her first real propo- 
sal, and from one of the richest men of her color in Prin- 
cess Anne, hastened to tie on her young mistress’s walk- 
ing-shoes, and, as they all stepped from the happy old 
church, where Vesta’s voice had so often pierced, in her 
flights of harmony, to a bliss that seemed to carry her 
soul, like a lark, to heaven’s gate, that 

“ singing, still dost soar, and, soaring, ever singest,” 

she saw fall upon the pavement of the churchyard the 
long, preposterous, moon-thrown hat of the bridegroom. 

“ Oh, what will he do with that hat, now that he has 
married me?” Vesta thought. “Will he continue to af- 
flict me with it?” 

Her heart sank down, so that she felt relieved when he 
kissed her again at the church-gate, and saying, “I will 
come soon, darling,” went, with his man, into Princess 
Anne. 

“ Is your buggy ready harnessed, Samson ?” his master 
asked, when they turned the court-house corner. 

“Yes, marster.” 

At this moment a large crowd of men, comprising all 
the idle population in town, as well as many Saturday- 
night bacchanalians from the country and coasts, some 
standing before the tavern, others on the opposite side- 
walks or gathered on the court-house corner, seeing the 
hatted figure of Meshach rise against the moonlight. 


PRINCESS ANNE FOLKS. 


”9 

raised the scattering cry, finally deepening into a 
yell, of: 

“ Man with the hat loose ! Steeple-top ! Three cheers 
for old Meshach’s hat !” 

With a minute’s irresolution, as if hesitating to go 
through the crowd, Milburn turned into the main street, 
crossed it, and continued down the opposite sidewalk, on 
the same side with his domicile, the jeers and jests still 
continuing. 

“ Dar’s rum a workin’ in dis town all arternoon, mars- 
ter,” his faithful negro said, “ eber sence dat long man 
come in from de churchyard wid Levin Dennis. Look 
out, marster !” 

He had scarcely spoken, when three men were seen to 
bar the way, two of them drunk, the third ugly with drink, 
emerging from a groggery that stood across the street 
from the tavern, where further beverage had been denied 
them. The first was Jack Wonnell. He hiccoughed, 
cried “ Steeple-top !” and slunk behind a mulberry-tree. 
The second man was Levin Dennis, hardly able to stand, 
and he sat down on the groggery step, smiling up idiotically. 

The third man, rising like a giant out of his boots, 
with his arms swaying like loose grapevines, and his 
bearded face streaked with tobacco drippings, looking 
insolence and contempt, brought the flat of one hand 
fairly down on the crown of Milburn’s surprising tile, 
with the words : 

“ Halloo ! Yer’s Goosecap ! Hocus that cady, Old 
Gripefist !” 

The hat, age being against it, wilted down on Me- 
shach’s eyes, and the heedless stroke, unconsciously pow- 
erful, staggered him. 

Samson, who had drunk in the giant’s qualifications 
with an instant’s admiration, immediately drew off, see- 
ing his master insulted, and struck the tall stranger a blow 
with his fist. The man reeled, rallied, and sought to grap- 


120 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


pie with Samson. That skilful pugilist bent his knees, 
slided his shoulders back, and, avoiding the clutch, raised, 
and threw his trunk forward, with the blow studied well, 
and planted his knuckles in the white man’s eyes. The 
tall ruffian went down as from a bolt of lightning. 

Milburn saw all this happen in a minute of time, and 
his eye, looking for something to defend himself, dropped 
on the brick pier under the groggery steps, where Levin 
Dennis sat, stupefied by the scene. A brick in the pier 
was loose, and Milburn stepped towards it. In this small 
interval the hardy stranger had recovered himself and 
staggered to his feet, and had drawn a dirk-knife. 

“ The ruffian cly you !” he bellowed. “ Knocked down ! 
by a nigger, too ! Hell have you, then !” 

As he darted forward, he described a rapid circle back- 
ward and downward with the knife, aiming to turn it 
through Samson’s bowels, which he would have done — 
that valorous servant being without defence, and not so 
much as a pebble of stone lying on the bare plain of the 
soil to to give him aid — had not Meshach, wresting the 
loose brick from the pier, aimed it at the corresponding 
exposed portion of the assassin’s body, and struck him 
full in the pit of the stomach. The man’s eyes rolled, 
and he fell, like one stone-dead, his dirk sticking in the 
sidewalk. 

“ Let him lie there,” said Meshach, contemptuously. 
“No danger of such a dog dying! If there is time he 
shall mend in the jail. Take to your buggy, boy, and 
keep out of the way.” 

The negro needed no warning, as the impiety of strik- 
ing a white man was forbidden in a larger book than the 
Bible — the book of ignorance. He disappeared through 
the houses and was a mile out of Princess Anne, driving 
fast, before the new man had raised his head from the 
ground. 

“ Where is the nigger?” he gasped, his paleface painted 


SHADOW OF THE TILE. 


1 2 I 


by his bloodshot eyes. “What kind of coves are you to 
let a black bloke fight a white man? I’ll cut his heart 
out before I tip the town.” 

He looked around on the crew which had crossed over 
from the tavern ; Meshach had vanished in his store at 
the descent of the road. Jimmy Phoebus was the only 
one to speak. 

“ Nigger buyer,” he said, “ if you are around this town 
from now till midnight, or after midnight to-morrer, Sun- 
day night, ole Meshach Milburn will have you in that air 
jail till Spring. By smoke ! he’ll find out yer aunty’s 
cedents, whair you goin, whair you been, what’s yer 
splurge, an all yer hokey pokey. You’ve struck the Ark 
of the Lord this time — ole Milburn’s Entailed Hat! 
Take my advice an’ travel!” 

The man washed his face at the tavern pump, turned 
the bank corner, and disappeared in the night towards 
Teackle Hall. 


Chapter XIII. 

SHADOW OF THE TILE. 

As Vesta and her father stepped over the sill of 
Teackle Hall, it seemed very dear, yet somewhat dread 
to them, being reclaimed again, but at the penalty of a 
new member of the family and he an intruder. To the 
library Vesta and her father went, and he threw some 
wood upon the low fire, and lighted the lamp and can- 
dles ; then turning, he took his daughter in his arms and 
sobbed bitterly, repeating over the words : “What shall I 
do ! O what shall I do !” She also yielded to the luxury 
of grief, but was speechless till he said : 

“My darling, I have dreamed of your wedding-day 
many a time, but it was not like this. Music and joy, 


122 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


free-heartedness, a handsome, youthful bridegroom, our 
whole connection gathered here from the army and navy, 
from South, West, and North, and all happy except poor 
Daniel Custis, about to lose his child !” 

“Your child is not to go,” Vesta whispered; “is not 
that a comfort ?” 

“ I do not know. Is it my pure, poor child ? Had I 
seen you waste with consumption, day by day, like a dy- 
ing lilac - tree, with its clusters fewer every year till it 
deadened to the root, I could have wept in heavenly 
sympathy, and learned from you the way I have not 
walked. But, in your flower to be a forester’s plucking, 
stripped from my stem and trodden in the sand, your 
pride reduced, your tastes unheeded, your heart dragged 
into the wigwam of a savage and made to consult his 
maudlin will — Oh, what shall I do !” 

“I do not fear my husband like that,” Vesta said, 
opening his arms. “ My mind, I think, he will rather 
raise to serious things, for which I have some desire, 
though, I fear, no talent. Papa, something tells me that 
this old life we have led, easy and happy, comfortable and 
independent, is passing away. Our family race must 
learn the new lessons of the age if we would not see it 
retired and obscure. Is that not so ?” 

“ I fear it is God’s truth, my darling. The life we 
have led is only a remnant of colonial, or, rather, of pro- 
vincial dignity, to which the nature of this republican gov- 
ernment is hostile. Tobacco, which was once our money, 
is disappearing from this shore, and wheat and corn we 
cannot grow like the rich young West, which is pouring 
them out through the canal the late Governor Clinton 
lived to open. Money is becoming a thing and not 
merely a name, and it captures every other thing — land, 
distinction, talent, family, even beauty and purity. The 
man you married understands the art of money and we 
do not.” 


SHADOW OF THE TILE. 


123 


“ Then are we not impostors, papa, if we assume to be 
so much better than our real superiors ? Surely we must 
persevere in those things the age demands, and excel in 
them, to sustain our pride.” 

“Yes, if the breed is gamecock it will accept any chal- 
lenge, not only war and politics, but mechanics, shop- 
keeping, cattle-herding, anything !” 

“Papa, if you can see these things that are to be, so 
clearly, why can you not take the wise steps to plant 
your family on the safe side ?” 

“ Ah ! we Virginians were always the best statesmen, 
but we died poor. Having no manual craft, slight book- 
keeping, and unlimited capacity for office, we foresaw 
everything but the humiliation of ourselves, and that we 
hardly admitted when it had come, so much were we 
flattered by our philosophic intellects. Our newest 
amusement is to expound the constitution to them who 
are doing too well under it, although our fathers, who 
made it, like Jefferson and Madison, died only yesterday, 
overwhelmed with debts, and poor Mr. Monroe is run 
away to New York, they say, to dodge the Virginia 
bailiffs.” 

“ Well, papa, I have saved you from that fear. Here 
are your notes to Mr. Milburn and others. Sit down 
and look them over carefully and see if they are all 
here !” 

He took them up, with volatile relief laughing on his 
yet tear-marked face, and said : 

“We’ll burn them, Vessy.” 

“ Nay, sir, not till you have seen them all. A single 
note missing would give you the same perplexity, and 
there is no daughter left to settle it.” 

He looked at hef with a smile, yet annoyance. 

“ Y ou are not going to make a Meshach Milburn of me ?” 

“ Stop, sir !” Vesta said. “ You might do worse than 
learn from my husband.” 


124 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


Something strange in her expression baffled the Judge. 

“ Ha !” he interjected, “ have I a rival already, daugh- 
ter ? Is his conquest as complete as that ?” 

“ I promised to honor him a few moments ago, and I 
believe I can, papa. All that you tell me adds to my re- 
spect for a man who seems to be only what he is.” 

“Perhaps you can love him, too?” the Judge said, 
watching her with an apprehension a little like wonder, a 
little like jealousy. 

“Oh, I wish I could, papa! That also I promised to 
do, and I will try. But my work will all be a failure if 
you do not become reconciled to Mr. Milburn. It was 
for you I married him, and to save your name, your 
peace, your independence, and the upbraiding we ex- 
pected from mamma at the loss of her dower. He is 
now your son-in-law, still in the prime of life, with the 
business training you lament that you do not possess. 
Begin this moment, papa, and learn his habits. Count 
and identify those notes !” 

Judge Custis looked them over separately, ran the 
number of notes he had given over in his mind, and 
said : 

“ Yes, he has made fair restitution. There are none 
missing.” 

“Restitution implies that he has robbed you, papa. 
A just man did not speak there! Every penny in those 
debts is stamped with Mr. Milburn’s injuries and coined 
by his sacrifices. Have you spent his money remember- 
ing that ?” 

“ No, my child, I suppose not.” 

“ Give me the notes, papa.” 

She took them and sat thinking a few moments silently. 

“ If I were a man, papa,” she said at length, “ I would 
try to learn business sense. It must be so respectable 
to live with one’s mind able to help one’s security and 
one’s friends, and prepare for age or sickness while 


SHADOW OF THE TILE. 


I2 5 


strong and healthy. Now, I think I will not let you 
burn these notes till you have paid the price of them ! 
Please write a transfer of this house, servants, and your 
manor to me, Vesta yes, Vesta Milburn !” 

She blushed as she spoke for the first time her new- 
worn name. 

“Alas!” sighed her father, “Vesta Custis no more. 
I begin to feel it. Well, Mrs. Milburn — I will give you 
the title — for what must I make over these old properties 
to you ?” 

“ In consideration of my repayment of the sum of my 
mother’s estate to you for her, for which you have given 
her no security whatever. It is not provided for by these 
notes. I have only Mr. Meshach Milburn’s promise that 
he will pay her this money, risked and lost by you, father, 
I fear very heedlessly. Is it restitution, also, for Mr. 
Milburn to strip himself to pay your debts to mother?” 

“No,” said the Judge, guiltily, “that he pays on ac- 
count of his passion for you. He may cheat you there.” 

“ I do not believe it, because he has been faithful to 
me so many years before I knew he loved me. A man 
who keeps himself pure for a woman he has no vows to, 
will pay her father’s debts of honor when he has prom- 
ised.” 

Judge Custis found the issue quite too warm for his 
convenience, and blushing as much as Vesta, he sat down 
and drew up a conveyance of his property to Vesta Mil- 
burn, in her own right, and in consideration of twenty- 
five thousand dollars, paid to Mrs. Lucy Custis on ac- 
count of judgment confessed to her by Daniel Custis. 

“There, my dear,” he said, passing it over, “what do 
you want with it ? Are you not sure of a home here as 
long as you live, even with me as the proprietor ?” 

“No. The tragedy nearly finished here may be re- 
peated, papa, and all of us be homeless if you can go in 
debt again. I shall not do that — not even for my hus- 


126 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


band, and here will stand Teackle Hall to protect you all 
from the cold if bad times ever come again.” 

“You have paid a greater price for it, my child, than 
it is worth, and you are entitled to it.” 

“Besides, dear father, if Mr. Milburn needs any re- 
minder of his promise to repay mamma’s dowry, this will 
give it. He intended his gift to be my marriage dower, 
and were I to convey it to you I should first ask his con- 
sent; not in law, perhaps, but in delicacy.” 

“ Oh, yes,” the Judge said carelessly, “I am glad you 
have such good reasons. Yet, my beautiful, my last 
child, — pride of my race ! I hate to see you so ready for 
this business — this calculation and foresight. It is not 
like the Custises. I fear this man, Milburn, in a single 
day has thrown his net around your nature, and annexed 
you to his sordid existence. At this moment the re- 
deeming thing about you is that you cannot love him.” 

“ Dear father, thoughts like that beset me, too — the 
pride of aristocracy, the remembrance of what has been ; 
but I want to be honest and not to cheat my heart or 
any person. We have fallen from our height; he has 
raised himself from his condition ; and there is no decep- 
tion in my conduct. He knows I do not love him. In- 
stead of standing upon an obdurate heart, I pray God to 
melt my nature and mould it to his affection !” 

Regarding her a moment with increasing interest, 
Judge Custis came forward and kissed her forehead. 

“ Amen, then !” he said. “ May you love your hus- 
band! I will do all I can to love him, too.” 

“ That is spoken like a true man,” Vesta said. “ And 
now, father, good-night! Be ready here for Mr. Mil- 
burn’s arrival. Ring for a decanter and some cake. It 
will not hurt you, after your fast, to drink a glass of sherry 
with the bridegroom.” 

He kissed her and felt her trembling in his arms. As 
she started to go, she returned and clung to him again. 
Her face was pale with fear. 


SHADOW OF THE TILE. 


127 


“ Oh, dreadful God !” he muttered, “ to visit my many 
sins upon this spotless angel ! Where shall I fly ?” 

A step was upon the porch, and Vesta flashed up the 
stairway. 

Judge Custis went to his door apprehensive and in 
tears. A strange man stood there, with his eye bruised 
and blood dripping down to his coarse, rope-like beard. 
He was in liquor, but so pale that it was apparent by the 
starlight. 

“Good-evening,” said the man ; “you don’t know me, 
Judge Custis? No matter, I’m Joe Johnson.” 

The Judge, whose tears had taken him far from things 
of trivial memory, looked at the man and repeated “ Joe 
Johnson. Not Joe Johnson of Dorchester?” 

“ Yes, J udge, Joe J ohnson, the slave-dealer. I’ve bought 
many a nigger from a Custis when it was impolite to sell 
’em, Judge, so they let me run ’em off, and cussed me for 
it to the public. An’ that’s made me onpopular, Judge 
Custis, and that’s my fix to-night.” 

“You have been fighting, Johnson, I think,” said the 
Judge, with suppressed dislike. 

“I’ve been knocked down by a nigger,” said the man, 
with a glare of ferocity, removing his hand from the 
wounded eye, as if it inflamed his recollection of the 
blow to see the drops of blood drip from his beard to 
the porch. “ This town is too nice to abide a dealer in 
the constitutional article, and so they set on me, when I 
was a little jingle-brained with lush, an’ while the nigger 
klemmed me in the peep, a little white villain with a 
steeple bonnet hit me in the bread-bag with a stone. 
I’ve come yer, Judge, to lie up in the kitchen, an’ sleep 
warm over Sunday, for the cops threaten to take me, if 
they catch me before midnight.” 

“ I suppose you know, Johnson, that I am a magistrate, 
and the proper harborage I give to breakers of the peace 
is the jail.” 


128 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“I’m not afraid of that limbo, Judge Custis, when I 
come to you. Old Patty Cannon has done you many a 
good turn with Joe Johnson’s gang about election times 
in the upper destreeks of Somerset. Patty always said 
Judge Custis was a game gentleman that returned a favor.” 

The Judge’s countenance, an instant blank, lighted up 
with all a vote-getter’s smile, and he said : 

“ Joe, you’re a terrible fellow, but dear old Aunt Patty 
did always take my part! I suspect, Joe, that you have 
run afoul of Samson, the hired man of Meshach Mil- 
burn, who is a boxer, though I wonder that he could get 
away with your youth and size. Of course, I won’t let 
you come to harm. You haven’t been playing your tricks 
on anybody’s negroes, Joe?” 

“ No, upon my word, Judge ! You. see, I took a load 
of Egypt down the Nanticoke to Norfolk, and shipped 
’em to Orleens. Says I: ‘I’ll go back Eastern Shore 
way, and see if there’s any niggers to git.’ So I tramped 
it from Somers’s Cove to Princess Anne, an’ sluiced my 
gob at Kingston and the Trappe till I felt noddy with the 
booze, and lay down in the churchyard to snooze it off. 
Bein’ awaked before my nod was out, I felt evil an’ 
chiveyish, and the tavern blokes, an’ the nigger, an’ the 
feller with the steeple shap, all decked me at once.” 

“Well, Joe, for Aunt Patty’s sake, I’ll take care of you. 
Go to the kitchen door, and I’ll step through the house 
and tell our Aunt Hominy to give you supper and break- 
fast, and a place to get some sleep. But you must keep 
out of the way, and slip off quietly on Sunday, for we 
have had a wedding in the family to-day, Joe, and though 
I cannot understand your peculiar slang, I suspect the 
bridegroom to be the man who knocked the breath out 
of you with the stone.” 

The stranger lifted his hand from his bloody eye again, 
and counted the red drops splashing down from his beard. 
Judge Custis marked his scowl. 


meshach’s home. 


129 


“Tut, tut!” said the Judge, “you will never get your 
revenge out of that man. He is too strong. I don’t 
wonder that he disabled you, and don’t you ever get into 
his clutches, Joe ; for if he knows you are here, I shall 
be forced to send you to jail this very night. Keep out 
of the hands of Meshach Milburn ! He has knocked the 
breath out of you, Mr. Johnson, but there are some whose 
hearts he has twisted out of their bodies.” 

“I’ll meet him somewhere,” Joe Johnson muttered, 
“ but not in Princess Anne and he pulled down his 
slouched hat to cover his eyes, and stalked away to find 
the kitchen. 

“Oh, what a day can bring forth,” Judge Custis thought, 
raising his hands to the October stars : “ Meshach of the 
ominous hat the host in my parlor : Joe Johnson, the 
son-in-law of Patty Cannon, the guest of my kitchen !” 


Chapter XIV. 
meshach’s home. 

Vesta had slept she hardly knew how long, but it was 
day, and slowly her eyes turned towards the remainder 
of her bed to see if it was occupied. 

The bridegroom was not there. 

She reached her foot into her slipper at the bedside, 
and at one swift step passed before her mirror, whisper- 
ing: 

“ I have dreamed it all !” 

The fresh, flushing skin, and radiant contrasts of hair 
and eyes seemed so welcome to her in their perfect as- 
surance of health, that she whispered again : 

“Have I dreamed it? He is not here. Oh, am I 
free ?” 

Then a feeling of reproval came to her as the minutest 

9 


130 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


memory of that wonderful yesterday rose to her mind, and 
the vow she had made to honor and obey seemed to have 
been too easily repented. She looked upon her hand, 
and the little, thin, pathetic thread of gold reaffirmed her 
memory of the wedding-ring, and at the next suggestion 
a blush coursed through her being like a redbird in the 
apple-blossoms : perhaps he had stolen from her cham- 
ber stealthily as he came, while she, drowned in deep 
slumber, wotted not. 

A glance into the mirror again revealed those blushes 
repeating each other, like the Aurora in the northern 
dawn, till, with a searching consciousness, and her voice 
raised above the whisper, she said, 

“ Be still, silly girl!” 

Opening the door, she found Virgie lying on the rug 
without, warmly wrapped in her mistress’s blanket-shawl, 
but wide awake. 

“Virgie, no one has passed?” asked Vesta. 

“No, Miss Vessy. Nobody could have stepped over 
me, for my mind has been too awake, if I did sleep a 
little. Maybe he ain’t a-coming, Miss Vessy. Maybe he’s 
ashamed !” 

“ Hush, Virgie,” Vesta said, “ you are speaking of your 
master.” 

Throwing her morning-robe around her shoulders, the 
maiden bride tripped noiselessly to her mother’s apart- 
ment ; the door was open, the night taper floating in its 
vase, and Mrs. Custis lay asleep with her bank-book un- 
der her pillow. 

“Shall I awake her?” Vesta thought. “Yes, if I do 
not need her experience, I do want her confidence, and 
not to give her mine would seem deceit now.” 

Vesta kissed her mother softly, and placed her cheek 
beside that lady’s thin, respectable profile as she awoke, 
and said : j 

“ Daughter, mercy ! why, what has become of you ? It 


meshach’s home. 


131 

seems to me I have seen nobody for days, and I wanted 
to express my indignation even in my dreams. Where 
have you been ?” 

“Oh, mamma,” Vesta said, taking Mrs. Custis’s head 
in her arms, “ I have been finding your lost fortune, which 
troubled us all so much. It is to be given back to you, 
dearest — my husband has promised to do so.” 

“Your husband? Whom have you selected, that he is 
so free with his money ? How could you hear from Bal- 
timore so soon? Now, don’t tell me a parcel of stuff, 
thinking to comfort me. Your father is a villain, and my 
connections shall know it.” 

Mrs. Custis drew her bank-book from under her head, and 
began to cry, as she took a single look at its former total. 

“Darling mamma,” Vesta said, “seeing you so miser- 
able yesterday on account of papa’s failure, and your por- 
tion gone with it, I accepted an offer of marriage, and 
have a rich man’s promise that, first of all, your part 
shall be paid to you. This house, and our manor, and 
everything as it is — the servants, the stable, and the 
movables — belong to me, in my own name, paid for in 
papa’s notes, and by him transferred to me to be our 
home forever, so that a revulsion like yesterday may not 
again cross the sill of our door. Does not that deserve 
a kiss, mamma?” 

“ I don’t believe a word of it,” said Mrs. Custis. “ This 
is another trick to deceive me. I don’t accuse you of it, 
Vesta, but you are the victim of somebody and your father. 
Now, who can this man be, so free with his ready money? 
It’s not the style in Baltimore to promise so liberally as 
all that. Have you accepted young Carroll ?” 

“ No, nor thought of him, mamma.” 

“ Then it must be that widower fool, Hynson, ready to 
sell his negroes for a second wife like you.” 

“He has neither been here in* body or mind,” Vesta 
said ; “ never in my mind.” 


i3 2 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ That would be a marriage to make a talk : it wouldn’t 
be like you to bestow so much beauty on a widower. I 
think there is a certain vulgarity about an elegant girl 
marrying a widower. She is so refined, and he is gener- 
ally so sleek and sensual. Did you hear from Charles 
McLane ?” 

“Nothing, mamma; let me ease your mind by telling 
you that my husband lives here in Princess Anne. He 
was father’s creditor, Mr. Meshach Milburn. He has 
loved me unknown for years. I saw a way to stop all 
scandal and recrimination by marrying him at once, that 
the society w T e know would have but one, and not two, 
subjects of curiosity. Papa saw me married last night to 
Mr. Milburn, and I bear his name this Sabbath day.” 

“ His wife ? Meshach Milburn ? The vulgarian in the 
play-actor’s hat? That man! Daughter, you play with 
my poor head. It is going again. Oh-h-h !” 

“ Mother, it is true. I am Mrs. Milburn. My husband 
is your benefactor.” 

It was unnecessary to say more, for Mrs. Custis had 
really fainted. 

“Poor mother!” thought Vesta, “I am confirmed in 
my fear that, if she had been told of my purpose, she 
would have opposed it bitterly.” 

Roxy was summoned to assist Vesta, and after Mrs. Cus- 
tis had become conscious, and sighed and cried hysterically, 
her daughter, sitting in her lady’s rocker, spoke out plainly : 

“ Mother, I appreciate your disappointment in my mar- 
riage, though I should be the one to make complaint 
and receive sympathy, instead of discouragement ; but I 
do not desire it; indeed, I will not permit any person to 
disparage my husband, or draw odious comparisons be- 
tween my poverty and his exertions. If there are in my 
body, or my society, any merits to please a man, they 
have fallen to him under the law of Providence, that he 
that hath shall receive. I pity your illness, dear mamma, 


MeShach’s home. 


133 

but I fear Mr. Milburn is ill, too, for he has not been here 
all night, though he left me at the church-gate.” 

“ I hope the viper is dead !” Mrs. Custis said, with great 
clearness, and energized it by sitting up in bed. Roxy 
left the room. 

“I hope he has been murdered,” said Mrs. Custis, 
“ and that the murderer will never be discovered. If 
there is any spirit of the McLanes left in my brothers 
and nephews, they will wipe out, in blood, the insult of 
this marriage between my daughter and the man who 
set a trap upon the ho-nor of a respectable family.” 

Vesta arose with a pale, troubled face, yet with some 
of her mother’s prejudice flashing back. 

“ He can defend himself, mamma. I shall go to seek 
him now, since he is so much hated for me.” 

She returned to her room, and put on a walking-suit, 
and made her toilet. In the library Vesta found her father 
dozing in a large chair, with his feet upon a leather sofa, 
and a silk handkerchief drawn across his crown, under 
which were the dry beds of tears that had coursed down 
his cheeks. She saw, with a touch of joy, that the sherry 
in the decanter was untouched, and the two glasses were 
still clean : he had not relapsed into his habits, even 
while making an all-night vigil to wait for the unwelcome 
son-in-law. He started as she entered, and then stared 
at her between his dazed wits and a mute inquiry that 
she could understand. 

“ He has not come, papa. And mamma— oh! she is 
severe.” 

Vesta, trembling at the throat a moment, rushed into 
her father’s wide-open arms, and buried the sob in his 
breast. 

“ Poor soul ! Poor lamb ! Poor thing !” he said, over 
and over, while his temper slowly rose, that seldom rose 
of recent years, since pleasure and carelessness had taken 
its masculine sting away, but Vesta felt his tones change 


i34 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


while he petted her, and at last heard him say, hoarse- 
ly: 

“ By God !” 

“ Sh — h !” she whispered, raising her hand to his 
mouth. 

“ I will kill somebody,” he went on, finishing his sen- 
tence, and as she drew away he strode across the room 
and back again, a noble exhibition of passion that had 
a noble origin, in fatherly pity. 

“ Don’t lose your true pride, papa, after you have per- 
severed so long,” Vesta said. “ It is Sunday. Do you 
think he will come? What can have happened?” 

“He will either come or fight me,” Judge Custis re- 
marked. “ I have tried to be a peaceable man and 
Christian magistrate, albeit a poor hypocrite in some 
things, but I am pushed too far. My wife’s smallness is 
worse than insanity and wickedness put together. Be- 
tween her and this money-broking fiend, and my neg- 
lected child entrapped into such a marriage, by God ! 
I will clean my old duelling arms, and appeal to injustice 
itself to set me even.” 

If he had been fine-looking in his sincere grief, he was 
thrice more attractive in his sincere high spirit. Vesta, 
admiring him in spite of her cares, did not like to see 
him in this unnatural recklessness. 

“ Dear father,” she said, soothingly, “ you have no 
cause of quarrel.” 

“ I have every cause,” he cried; “ the proposal to marry 
you was an insult, for which I should have challenged 
him, and shot him if he declined. Now he has married 
you and absconded, using you and the Custis honor with 
contempt. In my day I was the best shot in Eastern 
Virginia. I can kill a man in this cause as easily as I 
have broken either of a man’s arms, at choice, in my 
courting days. Public opinion will clear me under this 
provocation, and I can acquit my own conscience, abhor 


MESHACH*S HOME. 


*35 

rent as duelling is to me. My sons-in-law would leap to 
take the quarrel up, and rid the world of Meshach Mil- 
burn.” 

“ That is mamma’s idea, to kill the debtor who has 
been specially kind to her. She says she will send for 
Uncle Allan McLane, and is more unreasonable than 
ever. Papa, your feelings are unjust. Something we do 
not know of has happened to Mr. Milburn. He was not 
himself all the while at the church. Now that I recol- 
lect, he was not ardent for the marriage to be so soon. 
It was I who hastened the hour. Let us be right in 
everything, having progressed so far with the recovery of 
our fortunes, and let us await the fulfilment of events 
hopefully.” 

“ Milburn was drunk at the ceremony, I saw that,” 
Judge Custis said, “but it was no excuse. In fact, what 
good can come of this violent alliance ? It seems to me 
that we have leaped from the frying-pan into the fire. I 
feel ugly, my daughter, and there is no concealing it.” 

“ Then you are in the mood to talk to mother this 
morning,” Vesta said, “ while you have some unusual will 
and spirit. This resentful sullenness she is showing I 
fear more than your passing emotion, papa. Be firm, 
yet kind, with her, and I will go to find my husband. 
Yes, that is my place. He may be more justly complain- 
ing of my absence now, than we of his neglect.” 

“ You don’t mean that you are going to visit him at 
his den ?” 

“ I shall go there first. It would have been my home 
last night if he had required it. To tell the truth,” Vesta 
said, blushing, “ the poor man was so kind to me yester- 
day, in spite of his object, and so quaint, and, as it seemed, 
dependent on me, that my charity is enlisted for him, and 
I could almost have married him from pity.” 

The Judge’s temper fell a little in the study of his 
daughter’s blushing. 


136 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Wonderful ! wonderful !” he thought to himself; “ that 
poor corn-bred fellow has already made more impression 
on this girl’s pride than a hundred cavalier gallants. 
Truly, we are a republic, Vesta,” he continued aloud, 
“ and you lay down the Custis character as easily as 
our old connection, Lord Fairfax, accepted the democ- 
racy of his hired surveyor, Mr. Washington, before he 
died.” 

“I laid down the Custis name yesterday,” Vesta said, 
“ though not their better character, I hope. Papa, there 
is only one law of marriage ; it is where the wife follows 
the husband.” 

She looked a little archly at him, wiping her eyes of 
recent tears, and though she may not have meant it, he 
was reminded of his own fear of his wife. 

Aunt Hominy now came in, having been told by Virgie 
to prepare coffee, and she followed Roxy, who brought it 
into the library. The old cook had a strange look, as of 
one who had been up all night at a fire, or a “ protracted 
meeting,” and she poked her head in as if afraid to come 
farther, till Vesta went out and kissed her kindly. 

“ Poor Aunty Hominy ! did you think I was sold, or 
abused, because I had been married ? Dear old aunty, 
I shall never leave you !” 

Aunt Hominy had a countenance of profound, almost 
vacant, melancholy, mixed with a fear that, the Judge re- 
marked, “ he had seen on the faces of niggers that had 
stolen something.” 

“ Miss Vessy,” she stammered, at last, “ is you meas- 
ured in by ole Meshach ? Is he got you, honey ? Dat 
he has, chile ! He’s gwyn to bury you under dat pizen 
hat. Po’ little girl ! Po’ Miss Vessy !” 

“ Oh, Aunt Hominy,” Vesta said, “ he will be a kind 
master in spite of his queer hat, and take good care of 
you and all the children ; for he is my husband, and will 
love you all for me.” 


meshach’s HOME. 

A dumb, terrified look adhered to the old black wo- 
man’s face. 

“ No, he won’t be kind to nobody,” she gasped. “ You 
has gwyn been lost, Miss Vessy. You is measured in. 
De good Lord try an’ bress you ! Hominy ain’t meas- 
ured in yit. Hominy’s kivered herseff wid cammermile, 
an’ drunk biled lizzer tea. Hominy’s gone an’ got 
Quaker.” 

“ What’s Quaker , Aunt Hominy ?” 

“ Quaker,” the old woman repeated, backing out and 
looking down, “ Quaker’s what keeps him from a meas- 
urin’ of me in !” 

Then, as Vesta drew on her bonnet and shawl, having 
taken her coffee and toast, the old servant, gliding back 
in the depths of Teackle Hall, raised a wild African 
croon, as over the dead, giving her voice a musical in- 
flection like the jingle of Juba rhyme : 

“ Good-bye, Miss Vessy ! Good-bye, Aunt Hominy’s 
baby! Good-bye, dear young missis! Good-bye, my 
darlin’ chile, furever, furever, an’ O furever, little Vessy 
Custis, O chile, farewell !” 

The tears raining upon her cheeks, her wild, wringing 
hands and upflung arms and shape convulsed, Vesta re- 
membered long, and thought, as she left Teackle Hall 
with Virgie, that some African superstition had, by the 
aid of dreams, drawn into a passing excitement the faith- 
ful servant’s brain. 

At the corner of old Front Street, and extending al- 
most out upon the little Manokin bridge, stood Meshach 
Milburn’s two-story house and store, with a door upon 
both streets. Though planted low, in a hollow, it stood 
forward like Milburn’s challenging countenance, unsup- 
ported by any neighbors. 

“ Don’t it look like a witch’s, Missy ?” Virgie said, as 
Vesta took in its not unpicturesque outlines and crude 
plank carpentry, the weather - rotted roof, the decrepit 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


138 

chimney at the far end, the one garret window in the 
sharp gable, the scant little windows above stairs, and 
the doors low to the sand. 

“ It may have been the pride of the town fifty years 
ago, Virgie. I have passed it many a day, looking with 
mischievous curiosity for the steeple-hat, to show that to 
some city friend, little thinking I must ever enter the 
house. But hear that wilful bird singing so loud ! Where 
is it ?” 

“ I can’t tell to save my life. It ain’t in the tree 
yonder. It’s the first bird up this mornin’, Miss Vessy, 
sho’ !” 

“ Is not that larger door standing ajar, the one with 
the four panels in it?” Vesta asked. “Yes, it is unfast- 
ened and partly open.” 

The blood left Vesta’s heart a moment, as the thought 
ran through her mind : “ He has been watched, followed 
home, and murdered !” 

The idea seemed to explain his absence on his mar- 
riage night, and, like a sudden flame first seen upon a 
burning ship, lighting up the wide ocean with its bright 
terrors, Vesta saw the infinite relations of such a crime : 
her almost secret marriage, her custody of her father’s 
notes, the record of them upon her husband’s books, his 
last word at the church gate : “ I will come soon, dar- 
ling,” and now, this silent abode, with its door ajar on 
Sunday dawn, before the town was up — they might bear 
the suspicion of a dreadful crime by the ruined debtor 
house of Custis against their friendless creditor. 

This thought, personal to her father, was immediately 
dismissed in the feeling for a possibly murdered hus- 
band. If the idea barely touched her sense of self, that 
her tremendous sacrifice had been arrested by Heaven, 
and her purity saved between the altar and the nuptials 
by the bloodshed of her purchaser at the hands of some 
meaner avenger, though not until she had redeemed her 


meshach’s home. 


139 


father from Milburn’s clutch, this idea never passed be- 
yond the portal of her mind ; she repulsed it, entering, 
and began to think of the easy prey her husband might 
have been, hated by so many, defended by none, known 
to be very rich, no loss to the community, as it might 
think, in its financial ignorance, and his only guard a 
stalwart negro notorious for fighting. 

Believing Milburn to deserve better than his present 
fame, Vesta advanced towards the door of the old wood- 
en store with a spirit of commiseration and awe, and 
still the wild bird from somewhere poured out a shriek, 
a chuckle, a hurrah, enough to turn her blood to ice. 

As Vesta pushed open the old, seasoned door it dragged 
along the floor, and the loose iron bar and padlock, drop- 
ping down, made a ring that brought an echo like a 
tomb’s out of the hollow interior. 

“ ’Deed, Miss Vessy, I’m ’fraid to go in there,” Virgie 
said. 

“ You are not to come in till I call you. But hear 
that bird rioting in song ! Does Mr. Milburn keep 
birds ?” 

“ I can’t tell, Miss Vessy. That bird’s a Mocker. It 
must be in there somewhere. Oh, don’t go in, Miss 
Vessy ; something will catch you, dear Missy, sho’.” 

But Vesta was already gone, following the piercing 
sound of the native bird, that seemed to be in the loft. 

She saw a little counter of pine, and a pine desk built 
into it, and bundles of skins, some cord-wood, a pile of 
lumber and boxes, a few barrels of oil or spirits, and 
dust and cobwebs thick on everything; and a little way in 
from the door the light and darkness made weird effects 
upon each other, increasing the apparent distances, and 
changing the forms ; and the sun, now risen, made turning 
cylinders of gold-dust at certain knot-holes in the east- 
ern gable, across whose film she saw two lean mice stand 
upon the floor unalarmed, and tamely watch her come. 


140 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


The screaming of the bird was conveyed through the 
thin floor from above with loud distinctness, and every 
note of singing things seemed to be imitated by it, from 
the hawk’s gloating cry to the swallow’s twittering alarm, 
with the most rapid versatility, and even hurry, as if the 
creature was trying over every bird language, with the 
hope of finding one mankind could understand. It was 
idle to expect to be heard amid such clamor, and Vesta, 
having pounded on the floor a few times, made her way 
to a sort of cupboard, that might turn out to be a stair- 
way, and, sure enough, a door opened on its dark side, 
and light from above flickered down. 

At this moment the bird’s notes abruptly ceased, and 
a voice, unlike anything she had ever heard in her life, 
yet human, spoke in response to a more natural human 
voice, both issuing from above. 

The second voice seemed to be Milburn’s ; the first 
voice was something like it, yet not like anything from 
the throat of man, and the superstition she had been re- 
buking in her servant came with a thrilling influence 
upon her entire nature. She was about to fly, but called 
out one word as she arrested herself: 

“ Gentlemen ! Gentlemen !” 

The loud, unclassifiable voice above immediately an- 
swered : 

“ Gent ! Gent-gent-gent-en ! t-chee, t-chee ! Gents, 
tss-tss-tss ! Ha ! ha ! Gentlemen !” 

“ May I come up?” Vesta cried. 

“ Come, p-chee ! Come chee ! come tsee ! See me ! 
see me ! see me ! Come p-chee ! come see ! come see 
me !” 

The last accentuation, in spite of the bird’s interference, 
was sufficiently distinct to amount to an invitation, and 
with a raising of her eyelids once dependently to heaven, 
Vesta went up the stairs. 

She put her head into a large, long room, which took up 


meshach’s h6me. 


I 4 I 

the whole contents of the second story, and was lighted on 
three sides by the small windows she had seen without. 
It had no carpet or floor-covering of any kind ; the fire 
was gone out upon the chimney-hearth in the end, and 
the atmosphere, a little chill, was melting before the sun- 
shine which now streamed in at both sides of the fire- 
place and clearly revealed every object in the apartment, 
— some clothes-pegs, a wooden table with a blue plate, a 
blue cup and saucer and a saucepan upon it, and a coarse 
knife and fork; a large green chest, and a leather hat- 
box ; an old hair trunk fifty years old, and nearly falling 
to pieces ; black silhouettes, in little round ebony frames, 
of a woman and a man hung over the mantel, and be- 
tween them a silhouette of a face she had no difficulty in 
recognizing to be intended for her own. 

Stretched upon a low child’s bed, of the sort called 
trundle-bed in those days, which could be wheeled under 
the high-legged bed of the parents, lay the bridegroom, in 
his wedding-dress and gaitered shoes, with his steeple- 
crowned hat upon the faded calico quilt beside him, and 
his face as red as burning fever could make it. 

Vesta only verified the particulars of the inventory of 
Milburn’s lodge afterwards, her instant attention being 
drawn to the motionless form of her husband, whose 
flushed face seemed to indicate a death by strangulation 
or apoplexy. She went forward and put her hand upon 
him. 

“ Mr. Milburn !” she spoke. 

“ Milburn !” echoed a voice of piercing strength, though 
ill articulated. She looked around in astonishment, and 
saw nobody. 

“ Husband !” Vesta spoke, louder, stooping over him. 

“ S’band ! s’band ! See ! see !” shouted the wanton 
voice, almost at her elbow. 

Vesta, with one hand on the helpless man’s brow, turned 
again, almost indignantly, for the tone seemed to address 


42 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


some sense of neglect or shame in her, which she had not 
been guilty of. Still, nothing was to be seen. 

At the far corner of the room was a step-ladder lead- 
ing to a hole in the loft above ; but this was not the place 
of the interruption, for she heard the voice now come as 
from the chimney at the opposite end of the room, nearer 
the bed, and accompanied with a fluttering and scratch- 
ing, as if some spirit of evil, with the talons of a rat or a 
bat, was trying to break in where the prostrate man lay 
on the bed of oblivion. 

“ Meshach ! Meshach !” rang the half-human cry, “ Hoo ! 
hoo! Vesty! Vesty ! Sweet! sweet! sweet! Ha, ha! 
See me! See me! Meshach, he! Vesty, she! She! 
she ! she ! Hoot ! hoot ! ha !” 

Rapidly changing her view, with her ears no less than 
her heart tingling at the use of her own name, Vesta saw 
on the dusty wooden mantel a common bird of a gray 
color, with dashes of brown and black upon his wings, 
and a whitish breast, and he was greatly agitated, as if he 
meant to fly upon her or upon some other intruder she 
could not see. 

His eyes, of black pupils upon yellowish eyeballs, spar- 
kled with nervous activity. He flung himself into the 
air above her head, uttering sounds of such mellow rich- 
ness and such infinite fecundity of modulation, that the 
old hovel almost burst with intoxicated song, combining 
gladness, welcome, fear, defiance, superstition, horror, and 
epithalamium all together, like Orpheus gone mad, and 
losing the continuity of his golden notes. 

The bird’s upper bill was beaked like a hawk’s, his lower 
was sharp as a lance, and between them issued that infu- 
riated melody and cadence and epithet that old Patrick 
Henry’s spirit might have migrated into from his grave 
in the Virginia woods. He suddenly flung himself from 
his vortex of song upon the bed of the sick man, with a 
twitching hop and rapid opening and shutting of the tail. 


meshach’s home. 


143 


like the fan of a disturbed beauty, and thence perched 
upon Milburn’s peaked hat, and with a convulsive strug- 
gle of his throat and body, as if he were in superhuman 
labor, brought out, distinct as man could speak, the 
words, 

“ ’Sband ! ’sband ! Vesty ! Vesty ! Sweet ! sweet ! 
Come see ! come see !” 

Vesta, by a quick, expert movement, grasped the bird, 
and smoothed it against her bosom, and soothed its ex- 
citement. 

She had heard verified what Audubon avowed, and 
had but recently published in the beautiful edition of his 
works her father was a subscriber to, that some said the 
American mocking-bird could imitate the human voice, 
though the naturalist remarked that he himself had never 
heard the bird do it. 

The present verification, Vesta thought, of the mock- 
ing-bird’s supremest power, might have issued from its 
excitement at the silent and helpless condition of its mas- 
ter — that master who had told Vesta that no bird in the 
woods ever resisted his seductions and mystic influence. 

“If that be true,” Vesta said to herself, “there is no 
danger of this vociferous pet making his escape if I put 
him out of the window till I can see if his master speaks 
or lives.” 

So she raised the window, and flung the mocking-bird 
up into the air, and it came down and dropped into the 
old willow-tree beneath, and there set up a concert the 
Sabbath morning might have been proud of, when, in the 
corn-fields, the free-footed Saviour went plucking the milky 
ears. Vesta could but stop a minute and listen. 

The liquid notes chased each other around in circles 
of dizzy harmony, as if angels were at hide-and-seek on 
the blue branches of the air, eluding each other in pure- 
heartedness, chasing each other with eager love, sighing 
praise and happiness as their supernal hearts emitted 


144 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


music in the glow of ecstasy, and carrying upward the 
loveliest emotions of the earth in yearning sympathy for 
nature. No language, now, that Vesta could identify, 
was woven into that maze of morning song, which chal- 
lenged, with its fulness and golden weight, the floods of 
sunshine, matching light with sound, spontaneous both, 
and rivals for the favors of the soft atmosphere. Singing 
with all its heart, outdoing all it knew, forgetting imita- 
tion in wild improvisation, watching her window as it 
danced upon the twigs and fluttered into the air, con- 
scious of her listening as it purled and warbled towards 
her, and sounded every pipe and trumpet, virginal and 
clarion, hautboy and castanet, in the orchestra of its rus- 
tic bosom, the mocking-bird’s ode seemed almost super- 
natural this morn to Vesta, and she thought to herself : 

“Oh, what wedding music in the cathedral at Balti- 
more could equal that? and this poor man receives it for 
his epithalamium, without cost, as truly as if nature were 
greeting my coming to him in the old poet’s spirit: 

“ ‘ Now all is done ; bring home the bride againe ; 

Bring home the triumph of our victory; 

Bring home with you the glory of her gaine, 

With joyance bring her and with jollity : 

Sing, ye sweet angels, Alleluia sing, 

That all the woods may answer, and your echo ring.’ ” 

Relieved from the agitation of the mocking-bird, Vesta 
now gave her whole attention to her husband ; and the 
high heat of his brain and circulation, and his muttering, 
like delirium, seemed to indicate that he had an intense 
attack of intermittent fever. She heard the words sev- 
eral times repeated by him : “ I will come soon, darling !” 
and the simplicity of his devotion to her, unloved as he 
was, had such flavor of pathos in it that the tears started 
to Vesta’s eyes. 

“ Poor soul !” she said, “ it will be long before I can 
love him. There , his hunger must be enduring. But my 


meshach’s home. 


M5 

duty is not the less clear to stay by his side and nurse 
him, as his wife.” 

At this conclusion she looked Milburn over carefully, 
to see if any wound or sign of violence, whether by acci- 
dent or an enemy, appeared upon him, and finding none, 
and he all the time wandering in his sleep, she climbed 
the ladder and peeped into the garret, to see if his ser- 
vant might be there. Samson’s bed, as she supposed it 
was, had not been disturbed, and so, descending, she 
raised the window over the larger door she had entered 
by, and beckoned Virgie to come up. 

“ Take this tin cup,” she said to the quadroon, “ and go 
to the spring, near here, and bring it to me full of water.” 

Then, as the girl tripped away, Vesta found a piece of 
paper, and wrote her father a note, telling him to come 
to her ; and to the girl, when she returned, her mistress 
said : 

“ I want you to get a roll of new rag-carpet at Teackle 
Hall, and have it brought here, to spread upon this floor. 
Send me, too, a pair of our brass andirons, and pack in 
a basket some glass, table-ware, and linen. Tell papa 
to bring one of his own night-shirts, and to take down my 
picture in the sewing-room, and wrap it up, and have it 
sent. I must have mamma’s medicine-box and a wheel- 
barrow of ice ; and let Hominy make some strong tea 
and hot-water toast. Virgie, do not forget that this sick 
gentleman is my husband, and a part of our own family !” 

The girl’s face preserved its respect with difficulty as 
she heard the last part of the sentence, but she replied to 
what she understood to be a warning by saying : 

“ Miss Vessy, I never tell anybody tales.” 

“ No, dear, you do not. I only feared you might forget 
the very different view we must take of Mr. Milburn from 
his former life here.” 

Being again left alone, Vesta took the tin cup of spring- 
water, and, raising the disturbed man’s head, she gave 

io 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


146 

him a drink, and, as he opened his eyes to see whom it 
was, she heard him say, with an articulate sigh : 

“ Heaven.” 

With the remainder of the water and her handkerchief 
she washed his hot skin and kept it moist, and fitful mur- 
murs, as “ Darling !” “ Angel !” “ Beautiful lady !” came 
from his roving brain as perception and poison contended 
for his mind. The inborn sense in woman of happiness 
after doing good offices and being appreciated was at- 
tended with a certain intellectual elation, and even amuse- 
ment, at having witnessed what was altogether new to her, 
— the life of the meaner class of white people. She looked 
at the dexterous silhouette of herself, cut, probably, from 
memory, long ago, by the man, no doubt, who never knew 
her until yesterday, and, guessing the companion profiles 
to be his mother and father, she exclaimed, mentally : 

“I cannot see anything insincere about this man’s 
statement to me. Here are all the proofs of his deep 
attachment to me long before he forced my name upon 
papa with such apparent insolence. If papa could see 
these proofs with a woman’s interest, he would have a 
full apology in them. Here, too, is the bird that sings 
my name. What strength of prepossession the master 
must have had to make the feathered pupil repeat the 
sound of ‘ Vesta,’ and call me ‘ sweet !’ What resources, 
too, without the use of money or social aids ! He knows 
the story of our English beginning, while we make it an 
idle boast; but to him Cromwell and Milton, Raleigh 
and Vane, are men of to-day. Ah!” Vesta thought, “I 
think I see now one of those Puritans in my husband, of 
whom I have heard as sprinkled through Virginia. We 
are the Cavaliers. There is the Roundhead, even to the 
King James hat.” 

As she was led onward in these probabilities, Vesta 
took up the demure old Hat and looked it over without 
any superstition, and reflected : 


meshach’s home. 


147 


“ Do we not exaggerate trifles ? Why should this man 
be so derided because he covers his head with an old hat ? 
What of it ? Suppose it shows some vanity or eccentric- 
ity, why is there more merit in covering that up than in 
expressing it in the dress? The styles we wear to-day 
are the derision even of the current journals, and what 
will be thought of them fifty years hence, when the fash- 
ion magazines show me as I look, — the envy of my mo- 
ment, the fright of my grandchildren ?” 

With rising color, she put the hat in the leather hat- 
box, and shut it up. 

Judge Custis made his way up the dark stairs in a little 
while, and, as soon as he looked at Milburn, exclaimed, 

“ Curses come home to roost ! It was only night be- 
fore last that I said, in the presence of Meshach’s negro, 
‘ May the ague strike him and the bilious sweat from Nas- 
sawongo mill-pond !’ He slept by it that night, while I 
was tossing in misery. The next night it was his turn. 
Daughter, he has the bilious intermittent fever, the legacy 
of all his fathers. He exposed himself, I suppose, extra- 
ordinarily that night, and I hear that he burned the old 
cabin in the morning. Now he will burn, in memory of 
it, for the next ten weeks ; for he has, I suspect, from the 
time of day the burning and delirium came, what is called 
the double quotidian type of the fever, with two attacks 
in the twenty-four hours.” 

“ Poor man !” exclaimed Vesta. 

“ Now I can account for his appearance at the mar- 
riage ceremony last night. The fever was on him, but 
he went through it by hard grit, and, probably, returning 
here to get some relief, he just fell over on that bed, and 
his head left him for some hours. The paroxysm goes 
away during sleep, and returns in the morning ; so, be- 
fore he could get abroad to-day, even if he could walk, to 
report himself at Teackle Hall, another fever came, and 
a furious one, too, and he will have good luck to survive 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


148 

forty days of fever, with probably eighty sweats in that 
time.” 

“ He must be doctored at once, papa.” 

“ Well, I am good enough doctor for the bilious fever. 
He wants plenty of cold lemonade, cold sponging, and 
ice to suck when the fever is on him. When the chills 
intervene he wants blanketing, hot bottles at his feet, 
and hot tea, or something stronger. In the rest between 
the attacks of fever and chill, he wants calomel and Peru- 
vian bark, and if these delirious spells go on, he may 
want both bleeding and opium.” 

“ Here are some of the things he immediately needs, 
then,” Vesta said, as a tall white man she had never 
seen before came up the stairs with Virgie, bringing some 
Susquehanna ice in a blanket, and a roll of carpet, and 
other articles she had sent for. The man’s face wore a 
large bruise that heightened his savage appearance. 

“Judge,” exclaimed the stranger, “ I’m doin’ a little 
work to pay fur my board. Who’s your whiffler ? He’ll 
know me when he sees me next time.” 

Following the stranger’s eyes, Vesta and her father 
saw Meshach Milburn, half raised up from the low trun- 
dle-bed, staring at Joe Johnson as if trying to get at him. 
His lips moved, he partly articulated : 

“ Catch the — scoundre — him /” 

“Joe,” said the Judge, “slip away! He recognizes 
you as the assailant yesterday. Don’t hesitate : see how 
he glares at you !” 

“ Oh, it’s the billy-noodle with the steeple nab-cheat, 
him that settled me with the brick,” said the stranger, in 
a low voice. “ So I have piped him. Ah ! that’s plumby.” 

As the tall man started to go Milburn’s countenance 
relaxed, he wandered again in his head, and fell back 
upon the bed. 

“ I told you he was a hard hater, Mr. Johnson,” the 
Judge remarked. 


kESHACH*S HOME. 


* 4 9 

“ Them shakes is the equivvy for the bruise he give 
me, — that is, till we both heal up. He’s painted the en- 
signs of all nations on my stummick, Judge. But a blow 
is cured by a blow 1” 

With a look of admiring computation upon the girl 
Virgie, Joe Johnson drew his long figure down the stairs, 
like a pole. 

“ What a brutal giant,” Vesta said ; “ and how came he 
to be doing our errands ?” 

“ Why, Aunt Hominy hadn’t nobody to bring the wheel- 
barrow load, and this man said he’d come, and he would 
come, Miss Vesty, so I couldn’t say anything.” 

“ He’s a man of a good deal of influence,” said the 
Judge, uneasily, “in the upper part of our county, and 
in Delaware. Last night, after the wedding, he slapped 
Meshach’s hat, and old Samson knocked him down for 
it, and he would have killed Samson, I hear, but for your 
bridegroom, who felled him with a timely brick. It’s a 
hard team to pass on a narrow road, — Meshach and Sam- 
son; hey, Virgie?” 

“ I’m glad old Samson beat him, anyway,” the pretty 
quadroon said, showing her white teeth. 

“ Oh, what troubles will not that hat bring upon us !” 
Vesta thought; and then spoke: “If Mr. Milburn was 
strong, I think he would hardly let that man get out of 
the county before night.” 

“ Well, daughter, what are you going to do with these 
articles he has brought ?” 

“ They are to make this room comfortable. See, he 
has my picture here, cut by his own hands : I want to 
put a better one before him : help me hang it, papa !” 

In a few minutes the bright oil portrait, but recently 
painted by Mr. Rembrandt Peale, was taking the sun- 
light upon ks warm brunette cheeks, in full sight of the 
bridegroom, and the thick rag carpet warmed the floor, 
and Virgie had made a second errand to Teackle Hall, 


THE ENTAILED HAT/ 


I S° 

and brought back the lady’s rocking-chair that Milburn 
so much affected, and toilet articles, and some dark cloth 
to hide the bare boards in places, and the old loft soon 
wore a reasonable appearance of habitable life. Virgie 
made up the fire, and the brass andirons took the cheer- 
ful flame upon them, while Vesta sweetened the lemonade 
after her father had cut and squeezed the lemons, and 
added some magnesia to make the drink foam. 

“ Really,” said Judge Custis, “ this miserable den takes 
the rudimentary form of a home. I suppose there are 
now more comforts in his sight than Meshach’s whole 
race ever collected. What is your next move, Vesta?” 

“ To stay right here, darling papa, till it is safe and 
convenient to carry Mr. Milburn home.” 

“ Oh, folly ! it will excite scandal, and be repulsive to 
my feelings. This loft over a former groggery is no place 
for you : the news will spread from Chincoteague to Ar- 
lington. Every Custis that lives will censure me and 
outlaw you.” 

“ I think you had best see Mr. Tilghman before the 
service, papa, and have the marriage announced from the 
desk this morning : that will settle the excitement before 
night. As for staying here, my home, you know, is where 
he needs me. At his will I should have to stay here al- 
together. But I wish to do this, dear father. It is of 
the greatest necessity to my nature to improve my inter- 
course with my husband while he is sick, that the hasty 
marriage we made may still have its period of acquaint- 
ance and good understanding. I want to sound the pos- 
sibilities of my happiness. He will be less my master 
now than in his strength and possession. Perhaps — ” 
Vesta’s voice fell, and she turned to gaze upon the bride- 
groom, whose fever still consumed his wits — “perhaps I 
can influence his dress, — his appearance.” 

“You mean the steeple-top!” Judge Custis exclaimed, 
petulantly. 


meshach’s home. 


151 

At the loud sound of this familiar word, the feverish 
man’s ears were pierced as through some ever-open ven- 
tricle, like an old wound. 

“ Steeple-top ! Who cried * steeple-top ’ ? ” he muttered. 
“ Oh, can’t you see I’m married. She hears it. Oh, 
spare and pity her !” 

He wandered into the miasmatic world again, leaving 
them all touched, yet oppressed. 

“ How the very flint-stone will wear away before the 
water-drop,” Judge Custis finally said; “his obdurate 
heart has been bruised by that nickname. In public he 
never appeared to flinch before it ; but you see it in- 
flicted a never-healing wound. Who has not his vulture ?” 

“And how unjust to pursue this man with such frivo- 
lous inhospitality so many years,” Vesta exclaimed, her 
splendid eyes flashing. “ No account has been made of 
his private reasons, his family piety, or his stern taste, 
perhaps ; for he must have a reason for his wardrobe, 
that being, it would seem, the only thing there can be no 
independence about. Did you hear, papa, his feeling for 
me but this moment ? Strangely enough, my own mind 
was thinking of that hat. It seems to be bigger than the 
very steeples of the churches : it rises between the peo- 
ple and worship, yes, between us and Charity, and Faith, 
— I had almost said Hope, too.” 

“The colored people all say that hat he has to wear, 
because the devil makes him,” the trim, fawn-footed Vir- 
gie said ; “ Aunt Hominy says the Bad Man wouldn’t let 
him make no mo’ money if he didn’t go to church in that 
hat. Some of the white people says so, too.” 

“ You don’t believe such foolish tales as that, Virgie ?” 
Vesta asked. 

“’Deed, I don’t believe anything you say is a story, 
Miss Vessy. Hominy believes it. She’s ’most scared 
out of her life about Mr. Milburn coming to the house, 
an’ she’s got all the little ones a’ most crazy with fear.” 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


152 

“ Poor, dark, ignorant soul !” Vesta said ; “ she is, how* 
ever, more excusable than these grown men, whose preju- 
dices against an article of dress are as heathen in char- 
acter as her fetish superstition.” 

“ If he is a good man to you, Miss Vessy,” the slave 
girl said, “ I’ll think the Bad Man hasn’t got anything to 
do with him. If he treats you bad, I’ll think the Bad 
Man has.” 

“ Sometimes I feel as if men ought to have been left 
wild, like the animals,” the Judge said, rinsing out Mil- 
burn’s mouth with a piece of ice, “ for the obstacles to 
liberty raised by fashion and civilization are Asiatic in 
their despotism. Think of the taxes we pay to fashion 
when we refused less to kings. Think of the aristocracy 
based upon dress, after we have formally extirpated it by 
statute ! Think of the influence the boot-makers and 
mantua-makers of Europe, proceeding from the courts we 
have renounced, exert upon our Presidents and Sena- 
tors, and, through the women of this country, upon all 
the men in the land ! A million women who do not know 
that there are two houses of Congress, know just what 
bonnet the Duchess d’Angouleme is wearing, and how 
Charles X. in Paris ties his cravat. So the devil always 
gets a worm in every apple. The French Revolution 
abolished feudality, titles, great landed property, and only 
omitted to abolish fashion, and that worm — a silkworm it 
is — is devastating republican government everywhere, 
using the women to infect us.” 

“ Yet, in the nature of woman,” said Vesta, “ is the love 
of dress as strongly as the love of woman is in man. 
Some righteous purpose is in it, papa, — to ornament our- 
selves like the birds, and let art be born.” 

“God knows his own mysteries,” Judge Custis said. 
“ But Vesta, go home with me to your own comfortable 
home, and let Virgie stay here to keep watch.” 

“ Master, I’m afraid to stay here,” the girl exclaimed, 
sidling towards her young mistress. 


meshach’s HOME. 


153 

“ Then I will stay, and be nurse,” the Judge said. 
“ Fear not ! I will give him only wholesome medicine, 
whatever poison he has given me and mine. You stay 
in Teackle Hall, my precious child ! Indeed, I must 
command it.” 

Vesta smiled sadly and pointed to her husband. 

“ He commands me now, papa. You were too indul- 
gent a master, and spoiled me. No, Virgie and I will 
both remain, and you conciliate mamma. All is going 
well. Really, I am happy and grateful to my Heavenly 
Father that he is smoothing the way so gently, that I 
thought would be so hard.” 

“ Oh, the conditions of this disease are repulsive, my 
child. You are a lady.” 

“No, I am a woman,” said Vesta; “that man and I 
must see one or the other die. You do not know how 
easy it is for a woman to nurse a man. Though love 
might make the task more grateful, yet gratitude will do 
much to sweeten it. He has loved me and taken the 
shadow from your old age for me. Shall I leave him 
here to feel that I despise him ? No.” 

She kissed her father, and gave him his cane. 

“ Come back this afternoon, my love,” she said to 
him. 

“ Nothing on earth is like you !” exclaimed the old 
man. “ I fear you are not mine.” 

“ Yes,” Vesta said, “you are full of good, wherever you 
may have strayed.” 

As the sound of his feet passed from the doorway be- 
low, the sick man, with a sigh as from burning fire, opened 
his eyes and looked around. They fell upon her picture. 

“ What is that ?” he murmured ; “ I dreamed nothing 
like that, just now.” 

“ It is my picture. I am here,” Vesta said, bending 
over him. “ Don’t you know me ?” 

“ Who are you, dear lady ?” he breathed, with fever 


i54 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


weakened eye-sockets, and mind struggling up to his 
distended orbs, “ do I know you ?” 

“ Yes, I am Vesta — Vesta Custis, I was. I am your 
wife.” 

His eyes opened wide, as if hearing some wonderful 
news. 

“Wife? what is that? My wife? No.” 

“Yes, I am Vesta Milburn, your wife.” 

He seemed to remember, and, with compassion for 
him, she stooped and kissed him. 

“ God bless you !” he sighed, and passed away into 
the Upas shades again. 

At that minute the mocking-bird flew in the open win- 
dow and fluttered above the lowly bed, and perched 
upon the headboard and began to sing : 

“ ’Sband ! ’sband ! see ! see ! Vesty, sweet ! Vesty, 
sweet ! Ha, ha ! hurrah !” 


Chapter XV. 

THE KIDNAPPER. 

It seemed to Judge Daniel Custis as he walked abroad 
into the Sunday sunshine, that he had never seen a more 
perfect day. The leaves were turning on the great syca- 
more-trees, and the maples along the rise in the road wore 
their most delicate garments of nankeen, while some 
young hickories, loaded with nuts, and a high gum-tree, 
splendid in finery, beckoned him out their way, across 
the Manokin bridge to the opposite hill, where the Pres- 
byterian church overlooked the town. 

The Judge, whose eyes were filled with happy tears, 
partly at the real relief to his circumstances accom- 
plished by Vesta’s great sacrifice, and partly by the 
scene just closed, of her natural honor and fidelity to the 


THE KIDNAPPER. 


155 


man who had forced her wedding vows from her, took 
the northern course and crossed the little bridge, and as 
he went up the hill the environs of the town and the 
town itself spread out behind him in the stillness of the 
Sabbath, and the quails and fall birds piped and cackled 
low in the corn and the grain stubble. Some wild-geese 
in the south flew over the low gray woods towards the 
bay ; a pack of hounds somewhere bayed like distant 
music ; he heard the turkeys gobble, at one of the ad- 
jacent farms on the swells in the marshy landscape, 
where abundance, not otherwise denoted, showed in the 
fat poultry that roosted in the trees like living fruit and 
spoke apoplectically. 

While he drank in the wine of autumn on the air, that 
had a bare taste of frost, like the first acid in the sweet 
cider, he saw a carriage or two come over, the level roads 
towards Princess Anne, and the church-bell told their 
errand as it dropped into the serenity its fruity twang, like 
a pippin rolling from the bough. So easily, so musically, 
so regularly it rang, like the voice of something pure, that 
was steady even in its joys, that the Judge took off his 
broad white fur hat, as if to a lady, and listened with 
something between courtesy and piety. 

As the bell continued other carriages came towards 
town, and some passed him, their inmates all bowing, and 
often stealing a look back to see Judge Custis again, the 
first man in the county. 

They looked upon an humbled heart, a gladdened soul, 
which the sharp hand of affliction had made to bleed, 
while an unforeseen Providence in his darling child had 
kissed the wound to sleep and sucked the poison from it. 

Raising his brow towards the bright blue sky, as if he 
could not raise it high enough to feel more of that heav- 
enly rest encinctured there, the Judge sighed forth a 
happy wish, like the kiss of love after a quarrel, when 
doubt is all dispelled or wrong forgiven : 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


J 5 6 

“O make me as a little child! Wash out my stains! 
Lead me in the path my child has walked, or I shall 
never see her in the life to come !” 

His lips trembled and his breast heaved convulsively. 
In that idea of being unfit to enter where his child would 
go, in the more abundant life beyond the present, he re- 
ceived a distinct sermon from the long-empty pulpit of 
nature and conscience, and revelations from within clearer 
than Holy Scriptures ; for he felt the justice of the final 
separation of the impure from the pure, and the faith of 
perseverance in good to draw onward towards holiness 
itself, and perseverance in sensuality and selfishness to 
detain the spirit in its husk of swine. His agony in- 
creased. 

“Where shall I drift if I go on,” he said, “ playing the 
sleek magistrate and family head, and loving to slip away 
in the dark, like negroes hunting coons by night ? What 
is escaping discovery to the increasing degradation of 
my own sanctuary, my created spirit ? Can I find the 
way I have wandered down and retrace my steps ? There 
is but little of life left me to do it in, but by God’s help 
I will try ! Yes, this golden Sabbath I will do something 
to begin. What shall it be ?” 

He put on his hat, and said to himself : “ I will go to 
the Methodist meeting-house : they work directly upon 
the conscience, deepen the sense of sin, and preach a 
quick cleansing as by light shining in. There I may 
grovel in the sight of men and women and arise redeemed. 
But, no. It is the Sabbath my daughter’s marriage is to 
be announced in our own church, and it would be coward- 
ly, not to say unseemly, to fly from one worship to an- 
other now. If I go to church this morning it must be 
to our own. Is there any excuse but cowardice for not 
going ?” 

He looked into his debtor nature, to see what he owed 
to anybody, that might be owned and settled this day. 


THE KIDNAPPER. 


157 


Slowly and almost to his dislike there arose an obliga- 
tion to his wife — the obligation of love he was defraud- 
ing her of, if, indeed, he loved her at all with the ardor 
of old times. 

She had fretted his passion away in little sticklings for 
little proprieties, and narrowing understanding, and sub- 
servience to effeminate social traditions. She jarred upon 
the health of his intellect with her unsympathetic refine- 
ments and pitiful uncharities, and fear of all catholicity. 
She was gentility itself, without the spark of nature, and 
believing that she inhabited the castle towers of exclu- 
siveness and social righteousness, she had made his home 
the donjon-keep of his knighthood, at once the loftiest 
domestic apartment and the prison. 

Nevertheless, she was his wife, and something of her 
nature must be in Vesta, though the Judge had not found 
it. He reflected that his waywardness might have sharp- 
ened her peculiarities and spread the distance between 
their minds, till, deprived of a husband’s guidance, her 
fluttered woman’s nature had quit the pasturage of the 
fields and air, and perched upon her nest and vegetated 
there. 

“ I have gone away from her,” he said, “ and complain 
that she has not grown. I have myself abounded in vil- 
lage dignity and pretension, and set her the example of 
respecting nothing else. I have been a fraud, and won- 
der that she is not wordly-wise.” 

He found his infirm will very obdurate against mak- 
ing love to his wife again, but the request he had just 
made of Heaven, to lead him into the right steps* pre- 
vailed upon him to make his worship at home this morn- 
ing. 

“ Yes,” he said, “ I will start right. She is sick and 
alone, and Vesta taken from her. I will send a note to 
the rector to announce the marriage, as Vesta requested, 
and do my worship at Teackle Hall this day.” 


i58 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


The Manokin, spreading wider as it flowed farther from 
the town, and widening from a brook to a creek, till it 
moistened fringes of marsh and cut low bluffs into the 
fields, never seemed to invite him so much to wander 
along its sluices as this morn. 

“ If my wife would only walk with me into the coun- 
try,” he said, restlessly, “ how more companionable we 
would have been to each other ! But she cannot walk 
at all ; all masculine intercourse ceased between us years 
ago, and the dull, small range of household talk, and the 
dynastic gossip of the good families, wear down my spirits. 
But I have been a truant husband, and my tongue is 
parched by dusty rovings in prodigal ways. Let me woo 
her again with all my might !” 

He walked through Princess Anne, worship now having 
commenced in all the churches, and saw nobody upon 
the street except a divided group before the tavern. 
There he heard Jimmy Phoebus speak to Levin Dennis 
sharply : 

“ Levin, what you doin’ with that nigger buyer ? Ain’t 
you got no Dennis pride left in you ?” 

The Judge saw that Joe Johnson, safe from civil process 
on Sunday, even if his enemy had not been helpless in 
bed, was washing Levin Dennis’s brandy-sickened head 
under the street pump, plying the pump-handle and 
shampooing him with alternate hands. 

“Jimmy,” answered Levin, when he was free from the 
spout, “ this gentleman’s give me a job. I’m goin’ to 
take him out for tarrapin on the Sound. He’s goin’ to 
pay me for it.” 

“Tarrapin-catchin’ on a Sunday ain’t no respectable 
job for a Dennis, nohow,” cried Jimmy Phoebus, bluntly ; 
“ an’ doin’ it with a nigger buyer is a fine splurge fur you, 
by smoke ! I can’t see where your pride is, Levin, to 
save my life.” 

Jack Wonnell, wearing a bell -crown, looked on with 


THE KIDNAPPER. 


*59 

timid enjoyment of this plain talk, opening his mouth to 
grin, shutting it to shudder. 

The big stranger, dropping Levin Dennis, strode in his 
long jack-boots, in which his coarse trousers were stuffed, 
right to the front of Jimmy Phoebus, and glared at him 
through his inflamed and unsightly eye. Jimmy met his 
scowl with a mildness almost amounting to contempt. 

“ Hark ye !” spoke the stranger, “ you have been a 
picking a quarrel with me all yisterday, an’ to-day air a 
beginnin’ of it agin. Do you want to fight ?” 

“ No,” said Jimmy, whittling a stick ; “ I ain’t fond of 
fighting, and I never do it of a Sunday. I wouldn’t be 
guilty of fightin’ you, by smoke !” 

“ I have tuk a bigger nug than you and nicked his 
kicks into the bottom of his gizzard till his liver-lights 
fell into my mauleys. So it’s nish or knife betwixt us, 
my bene cove !” 

He put his hand upon his hip, where he carried a 
sheath-knife. 

“ Raise that hand,” said Jimmy Phoebus, with a quick 
pass of his whittling knife to the giant’s throat. “ Raise 
it or, by smoke ! yer goes yer jugler.” 

As Phoebus spoke he lifted one foot, of a prodigious 
size, as deftly as an elephant hoisting his trunk, and 
kicked the man’s hand from the hip pocket without 
moving either his own body or countenance. It was 
done so automatically that the other turned fiercely to 
see who kicked him, and his sheath-knife, partly raised, 
was flung by the force of the kick several yards away. 

“Pick up his knife, Levin,” Jimmy said, “or he’ll hurt 
hisself with it.” 

At this moment Judge Custis came up and pushed the 
two powerful men apart. 

“ Fighting on Sunday in our public street,” he ex- 
claimed ; “ Phoebus, I wouldn’t have thought it of 
you !” 


l6o THE ENTAILED HAT. 

“This yer bully, Judge,” Jimmy said coolly, “started 
to take Prencess Anne the fust day, an’ ole Meshach’s 
Samson knocked him a sprawlin’, an’ Meshach hisself 
finished him. To-day he starts in to lead off yon poor 
imbecile, Levin Dennis, and, as I expresses my opinion 
of it, he draws his knife on me ; so I takes my foot, Judge, 
that you have seen me untie a knot with, and I spiles his 
wrist with it. Take care of his knife, Levin, — he’s a pore 
creetur without it.” 

“ We’ll have this out, nope for nope, or may I take the 
morning-drop 1” growled the strange man. 

“ That kind of language ain’t understood in honest 
company,” Jimmy Phoebus said; “ I s’pose it’s thieves’ 
lingo, used among your friends, or, maybe, big words 
you bully strangers with, when you want to cut a splurge. 
Now, as you’ve been licked by a nigger and kicked by a 
white man, maybe you can understand my language ! 
Hark you, too, nigger buyer ! Do you know where I saw 
you first ?” 

For the first time a flash of fire came from the pungy 
captain’s black cherries of eyes, and his huge broad face 
of swarthy color expressed its full Oriental character : 

“The last time I saw you, Joe Johnson, was not a-lurk- 
ing in Judge Custis’s kitchen fur no good, nor a-insultin’ 
of the Judge’s t’other visitor, Milburn of the steeple-top : 
it was a-huggin’ the whippin’-post on the public green of 
Georgetown, State of Delaware, an’ the sheriff a-layin’ of 
it over your back ; an’ after he sot you up in the pillory 
I took the rottenest egg I could git, an’ I bust it right on 
the eye where that nigger bruised you yisterday !” 

The oppressive silence, as Joe Johnson slunk back, 
desperate with rage, yet unable to deny, was broken by 
Jack Wonnell’s unthinking interjection : 

“ Whoop, Jimmy ! Hooraw for Prencess Anne !” 

“An’ why did I git that egg an’ make you smell it, 
Joe Johnson? Because, by smoke! you was a stinkin 1 


THE KIDNAPPER. 


161 

kidnapper, robbing of the pore free niggers of their lib- 
erty, knowin’ that they didn’t carry no arms and couldn’t 
make no good defense ! That’s your trade, an’ it’s the 
meanest an’ most cowardly in the world. It’s doin’ what 
the Algerynes does in fair fighting. You’re a fine Ameri- 
can citizen, ain’t you ? I know your gang, and a bloody 
one it is, but you can’t look a white man in the eye, be- 
cause you’re a thief and a coward !” 

The Hellenic nature of the bay captain had never dis- 
played itself to the Judge with this fulness, and he felt 
some natural admiration as he took Phoebus by the arm. 

“ Well, well !” said the Judge, “ let him go now, Phoe- 
bus ! Mr. Johnson, don’t let me see you in Princess 
Anne again to-day. Continue your journey and disturb 
us no more, or I shall put criminal process upon you, 
and you see we have stout constables in Somerset.” 

As he led Phoebus around the corner of the bank, the 
Judge said : 

“James, my wife is so sick that I must keep house 
with her this morning, and I want a little note left at the 
church for Mr. Tilghman. Will you take it ?” 

“ Why, with pleasure, Judge,” the nonchalant villager 
replied. “ I don’t look very handsome in the ’piscopal 
church, but I’ll do a’ arrand.” 

As the Judge wrote the note with his gold pencil on a 
leaf of his memorandum book, he said : 

“James, did you identify that man yesterday?” 

“Yes, I knowed him as soon as he come to the tavern. 
This mornin’, seein’ of him around town, I was afear’d 
Samson Hat would stumble on him, and the nigger buyer 
would kill him for yisterday’s blow. Thinks I : ‘ Samson 
is too white a nigger to be killed that way, by smoke !’ 
but the prejudice agin a nigger hittin’ a white man is sich 
in this state that Joe Johnson, bloody as he is, would 
never have stretched hemp for Samson Hat; so I picked 
a quarrel with the nigger buyer to take the fight out of 
ii 


162 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


him before Samson should come. He won’t fight no- 
body now in this town. His hokey-pokey is don e yer” 

“ You took a great risk, Phoebus. He is such an evil 
fellow in his resentments, that I let him hide and eat in 
my quarters for fear of some ill requital if I refused. 
That gang of Patty Cannon’s is the curse of the Eastern 
Shore.” 

“And if you’ll pardon a younger and a porer man, 
Judge, it’s jest sich gentlemen as you that lets it go on. 
You politicians give them people ’munity, an’ let ’em 
alone because they fight fur you in ’lection times an’ air 
popular with foresters an’ pore trash, because they per- 
secutes niggers an’ treats to liquor. You know the laws 
is agin their actions on both sides of the Delaware line, 
but in Maryland they’re a dead letter.” 

“ You speak plain truth, James Phoebus, brave as your 
conduct. But the poor men must make a sentiment 
against these kidnappers, because among the ignorant 
poor they find their defenders and equals.” 

“Judge,” the pungy captain said, “ they’se a-makin’ a 
pangymonum of all the destreak about Patty Cannon’s. 
By smoke ! it’s a shame to liberty. In open day they 
lead free niggers, men, wimmin, an’ little children, too, 
to be sold, who’s free as my mommy and your daughter.” 

Judge Custis thought painfully of the scant freedom 
his daughter now enjoyed. Jimmy Phoebus continued : 

“Now yer, we’re raising hokey-pokey about the Al- 
gerynes and the Trypollytins capturin’ of a few Christian 
people an’ sellin’ of ’em to Turkey, an’ about the Turkey 
people makin’ slaves of the Christian Greek folks. Henry 
Clay is cuttin’ a big splurge about it. Money is bein’ 
raised all over the country to send it to ’em. Commodo’ 
Decatur was a big man for a-breakin’ of it up. By smoke ! 
they’re sellin’ more free people to death and hell along 
Mason and Dixon’s line, than up the whole buzzum of 
the Mediterranean Sea.” 


THE KIDNAPPER. 


163 

The brown - skinned speaker was more excited now 
than he had been during all the collision with Joe John- 
son. 

“ Indeed, Phoebus, they have kidnapped several thou- 
sand people, the Philadelphia abolitionists say, but the 
reports must be exaggerated. The demand for negroes 
is so great, since the cotton-gin and the foreign markets 
have made cotton a great staple, and the direct importa- 
tion of slaves from Africa has been stopped, that there 
is a great run for border-state negroes, and free colored 
people seldom are righted when they have been pulled 
across the line.” 

“They never are righted, Judge Custis ! I’m ashamed 
of my native state. Only a few years ago, when I was a 
boy, people around yer was a-freein’ of their niggers, and 
it was understood that slavery would a-die out, an’ every- 
body said, ‘ Let the evil thing go.’ But niggers began to 
go up high ; they got to be wuth eight hunderd dollars 
whair they wasn’t wuth two hunderd ; and all the politi- 
cians begun to say : 4 Niggers is not fit to be free. Nig- 
gers is the bulrush, or the bulwork, or bull - something 
of our nation.’ And then kidnapping of free niggers 
started, and the next thing they’ll kidnap free American 
citizens !” 

“Tut ! tut ! James ! it will never go that far.” 

“Won’t it? What did Joe Johnson say to me last 
night before the Washington Tavern ? He said : 4 I’ve 
sold whiter niggers than you, myself. I kin run you to 
market an’ git my price for you !’ ” 

The bay sailor took off his hat. 

“ Look at me !” he continued ; “ by smoke ! look on my 
brown skin and black eyes an’ coal black hair. Whair 
did they come from ? They come from Greece, whair 
Leonidas an’ Marky Bozarris and all them fellers came 
from : that’s what my daddy said. He know’d better 
than me. I’m nothin’ but a pore Eastern Shore man 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


164 

sailing my little vessel, but I’m a free-born' man, and I 
tell you, Judge, it’s a dangerous time when nothing but 
his shade of color protects a free man.” 

“James Phoebus,” the Judge said, gravely, “ I hope 
you believe me when I say that I think all these things 
outrages, and they grow out of the greater outrage of 
slavery itself. We are being governed by new states, 
hatched in the Southwest from the alligator eggs of old 
slavery, that had grown into political and moral disre- 
pute with us in Maryland and Virginia.” 

“ There’s no nigger in me,” Phoebus said, putting on 
his hat, “ but I have taken these hints about my looking 
like a nigger to heart, and I’ll take a nigger’s part when 
he is imposed on, as if he was some of the body and 
blood of my Lord Jesus. Now you hear it !” 

“ And brave enough you are to mean it, my honest fel- 
low. So do my errand, and good-morning, James.” 


Chapter XVI. 

BELL-CROWN MAN. 

As the Judge and Phoebus had turned the corner of 
the bank Samson Hat appeared, driving down Princess 
Anne’s broad main street a young white girl. 

“There’s the nigger that set my peep in limbo,” mut- 
tered the negro dealer, “ but even he shall go past to-day. 
This accursed town is packed agin me.” 

He took a long look at Samson, however, who mildly 
returned it in the most respectful manner, as if he had 
never seen the strange gentleman before. 

“ And now, my pals,” Joe Johnson said, turning to Levin 
Dennis and Jack Wonnell, “ we will all three go down to 
the bay and I’ll pervide the lush, and pay the soap while 
you ketch the tarrapin, an’ let me sleep my nazy off.” 


bell-crown man. 


165 

“ I’ll go an’ no mistake !” cried Jack Wonnell, who had 
been taking a drink of pump-water out of his bell-crown. 
“ So will you, Levin.” 

Levin Dennis hesitated ; “ I want to tell my mother 
first,” he said, “ maybe she won’t like me fur to go of a 
Sunday. She’ll send Jimmy Phoebus after me.” 

Joe Johnson took a bag of gold from inside his waist- 
band, hanging by a loop there, and held up a piece of five 
before the boy’s bright eyes : 

“ Yer, kid ! That’s yourn if you don’t have no mother 
about it. Pike away with me, pig widgeon, an’ find your 
boat, and I pay you this pash at sundown.” 

Levin’s credulous eyes shone, and with one reluctant 
look towards his mother’s cottage he led the way into 
the country. 

Little was said as they walked an hour or more tow- 
ards the west, the stranger apparently brooding upon 
his indignities, and twice passing around the jug of 
brandy which Jack Wonnell was made to carry, and 
before noon they came to a considerable creek, out in 
which was anchored a small vessel bearing on her stern 
in illiterate, often inverted, letters the name : Ellenora 
Dennis. 

“What’s that glibe on yonder?” asked Johnson, point- 
ing to the letters. 

“That’s his mother’s name, boss,” Jack Wonnell said, 
hitching at the sti anger’s breeches, “she’s a widder, an’ 
purty as a peach.” 

“Ain’t you got no daddy, pore pap -lap?” Johnson 
asked coarsely.” 

“ He’s gone sence I was a baby,” Levin answered ; “ he 
went on Judge Custis’s uncle’s privateer that never was 
heard of no mo’. We don’t know if the British tuk him 
an’ hanged him, or if the Idy sunk somewhair an’ drowned 
him, or if she’s a-sailin’ away off. I has to take care of 
mother.” 


i66 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Humph !” growled Joe Johnson ; “ son of a gander 
and a gilflirt : purty kid, too — got the ole families into 
him. No better loll for me !” 

Drawing a punt concealed under some marsh brush, 
young Levin pushed off to his vessel, made her tidy by a 
few changes, pulled up the jib, and brought her in to the 
bank. 

“ Mr. Johnson, I never ketched tarrapin of a Sunday 
befo’, but I reckon tain’t no harm.” 

“ Harm ? what’s that ?” Joe Johnson sneered. “ Hark 
ye, boy, no funking with me now ! When I begin with a 
kinchin cove I starts squar. If ye think it’s wicked to 
ketch tarrapin, why, I want ’em caught. If you don't keer, 
you kin jest stick up yer sail an’ pint for Deil’s Island, 
an’ we’ll make it a woyige !” 

Not quite clear as to his instructions, Levin took the 
tiller, and Jack Wonnell superserviceably got the terra- 
pin tongs, and stood in the bow while the cat - boat 
skimmed down Monie Creek before a good breeze and a 
lee tide. The chain dredge for terrapin was thrown over 
the side, but the boat made too much sail for Wonnell to 
take more than one or two tardy animals with his tongs, 
as they hovered around the transparent bottoms making 
ready for their winter descent into the mud. 

“Take up your dredge,” Johnson commanded in a few 
minutes. “ It makes us go slow.” 

Jack Wonnell obediently made a few turns on the 
windlass, and as the bag came up, two terrapin of the 
then common diamond-back variety rolled on the deck, 
and a skilpot. 

“ That’s enough tarrapins,” Johnson said, “ unless you’re 
afraid it’s doin’ wrong, Levin. Say, spooney ! is it wicked 
now ?” 

The boy laughed, a little pale of face, and Johnson 
closed his remark with : 

“ Nawthin’ ain’t wicked ! Sunday is dustman’s day to 


BELL-CROWN MAN. 


167 

be broke by heroes. D’ye s’pose yer daddy on the pri- 
vateer wouldn’t lick the British of a Sunday ? The way 
to git rich, sonny, is to break all the commandments at 
the post, an’ pick ’em up agin at the score !” 

“That’s the way, sho’ as you’re born. Whoop ! John- 
son, you got it right!” chuckled Jack Wonnell, not clear 
as to what was said. 

Levin Dennis felt a little shudder pass through him, 
but he gave the stranger the helm, and by Wonnell’s aid 
raised the main-sheet, and the light boat went winging 
across Monie Bay, starting the water -fowl as it tacked 
through them. 

“ Here’s another swig all round,” Joe Johnson ex- 
claimed, “ and then I’ll go below to lollop an hour, for 
I’m bloody lush.” 

Levin drank again, and it took the shuddering instinct 
out of him, and Joe Johnson cried, as he disappeared into 
the little cabin : 

“ Ree-collect ! You pint her for Deil’s Island thorough- 
fare, and wake me, pals, at the old camp-ground, fur to 
dine.” 

The two Princess Anne neighbors felt relieved of the 
long man’s company, and Jack Wonnell lay on his back 
astern and grinned at Levin as if there was a great un- 
known joke or coincidence between them, finally whis- 
pering : * 

“ Where does he git all his gold ?” 

Levin shook his head : 

“ Can’t tell, Jack, to save my life. Nigger tradin’, I 
reckon. It must be payin’ business, Jack.” 

“ Best business in the world. Wish I had a little of 
his money, Levin. Hu-ue- 00 !” giving a low shout, “ then 
wouldn’t I git my gal !” 

“ Who’s yo’ gal, Jack, for this winter?” 

“You won’t tell nobody, Levin?” 

“ No, hope 1 may die 1” 


i68 


THE ENTAILED HAT, 


Jack put his bell-crown up to the side of his mouth, 
executed another grin, winked one eye knowingly, and 
whispered : 

“ Purty yaller Roxy, Jedge Custis’s gal.” 

“She won’t have nothin’ to do with you, Jack; she’s 
too well raised.” 

“ She ain’t had yit, Levin, but I’m follerin’ of her 
aroun’. There ain’t no white gal in Princess Anne 
purty as them two house gals of Jedge Custis’s.” 

“Well, what kin you do with a nigger, Jack? You 
never kin marry her.” 

“ Maybe I kin buy her, Levin.” 

“ She ain’t fur sale, Jack. Jedge Custis never sells no 
niggers. You can’t buy a nigger to save your life. When 
some of Jedge Custis’s niggers in Accomac run away he 
wouldn’t let people hunt for ’em.” 

Jack Wonnell put his bell -crown to the side of his 
mouth again, grinned hideously, and whispered : 

“ Kin you keep a secret ?” 

Levin nodded, yes. 

“ Hope a may die ?” 

“ Hope I may die, Jack.” 

“Jedge Custis is gwyn to be sold out by Meshach Mil- 
burn.” 

“ What a lie, Jack !” 

Levin let the tiller half go, and the Ellenora Detmis 
swung round and flapped her sails as if such news had 
driven all the wind out of them. 

“Jack,” Levin exclaimed, “Jimmy Phoebus says you’ve 
turned out a reg’lar liar. Now I believe it, too.” 

“ Hope I may die !” Jack Wonnell protested, “ I never 
does lie : it’s too hard to find lies for things when people 
comes an’ tells you, or you kin see fur yourseff. Jimmy 
called me a liar fur sayin’ Meshach Milburn was gone 
into the Jedge’s front do’, but we saw him come out of it, 
didn’t we ?” 


feELL-CROWN Man. 


169 

“Yes, that was so ; but this yer one is an awful lie.” 

“Well, Levin, purty yaller Roxy, she told me, an’ she’s 
too purty to tell lies. I loves that gal like peach-an’- 
honey, Levin, an’ I don’t keer whether she’s white or no. 
She’s mos’ as white as me, an’ a good deal better.” 

“ So you do talk to Roxy some ?” 

“ Levin, I’ll tell you all about it, an’ you won’t tell no- 
body. Well, I picks magnoleys an’ wild roses an’ sich 
purty things fur Roxy to give her missis, an’ Roxy gives 
me cake, an’ chicken, an’ coffee at the back door, knowin’ 
I ain’t got much to buy ’em with. Lord bless her ! she 
don’t half know I don’t think as much of them cakes an’ 
snacks an’ warm rich coffee, as I do of her purty eyes. 
She’s a white angel with a little coffee in her blood, but 
it’s ole Goverment Javey an’ more than half cream !” 

Here Levin laughed loudly, and said that Jack must 
have learned that out of a book. 

“Oh,” said Jack, shutting one eye hard and joining in 
the grin,” sence I ben in love I kin say lots o’ smart 
things like that. I have seen purty little Roxy grow up 
from a chile, an’ as she begin to round up and git tall, 
says I : ‘ Nigger or no nigger, she’s angel !’ The white 
gals they all throwed off on me, caze I wasn’t earnin’ 
nothin’, an’ I sot my eyes on Roxy Custis an’ I says : 
‘ What kin I do fur to make her shine to me ?’ So I 
kept a-follerin’ of her everywhere, an’ I see her one day 
coinin’ along the road a-pickin’ of the wild blossoms an’ 
with her han’ full of ’em, an’ I says : ‘ Roxy, what you 
doin’ of with them flowers ?’ ‘ They’re fur my missis, 

Miss Vesty,’ says she ; £ she lives on wild flowers, an’ 
they’re all I has to give her, an’ I want her to love me 
as much as Virgie.’ You see Levin, the t’other gal, Vir- 
gie, waits on Miss Custis, an’ Roxy she was a little jeal- 
ous. Then I says : ‘ Roxy, I kin git you flowers for your 
missis. I know whair the magnoleys is bloomin’ the 
whitest an’ a-scentin’ the whole day long.’ * Do you ?’ 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


170 

says she , 1 Oh, Mr. Wonnell, I would like to have a bunch 
of magnoleys to put on Miss Vesty’s toilet every day.’ 

‘ I’ll git ’em fur you, Roxy,’ says I, ‘ becaze I alius thought 
you was a little beauty.’ Says she : ‘ I’d give most any- 
thing to surprise Miss Vesty with flowers every day, — rale 
wild ones !’ ‘ Then,’ says I, ‘ Roxy, I’ll git ’em fur you 

for a kiss !’ An’ she most a-blushed blood-red an’ ran 
away.” 

“ That’s what I told you, Jack, she’s raised too well to 
be talkin’ to white fellers.” 

“Nobody’s raised too well,” rejoined Jack Wonnell, 
“ to be deef to love and kindness. Says I to myself : 
‘Jack, you skeert that gal. Now say nothin’ mo’ about 
the kiss, an’ go git her the flowers every day, an’ she’ll 
think mo’ of you !’ So away I went to King’s Creek an’ 
pulled the magnoleys, an’ I come to the do’ an’ asked 
ole Hominy to bring down Roxy for a minute. Roxy 
she come, an’ was gwyn to run away till she saw my 
flowers, an’ she stopped a minute an’ says I : ‘ I jest got 
’em for you, Roxy, becaze I see you when you was a lit' 
tie chile.’ She tuk ’em an’ says : £ It was very kind of 
you, sir,’ an’ kercheyed an’ melted away. Next day I 
was thar agin, Levin, an’ I says, to make it seem like a 
trade : ‘ Roxy, kin ye give me a cup of coffee ?’ ‘ Law, 

yes !’ she says, forgittin’ her blushin’ right away. So I 
kept shady on love an’ put it on the groun’s of coffee, 
an’, Levin, I everlastin’ly fotched the wild flowers till that 
gal got to be a-lookin’ fur me at the do’ every day, an’ 
I’d hide an’ see her come to the window an’ peep fur 
me. One day she says, as I was drinkin’ of the coffee : 
‘ Mr. Wonnell, what do you put yourself at sech pains fur 
to ’blige a pore slave girl that ain’t but half white ?’ I 
thought a minute, so as to say something that wouldn’t 
skeer her off, an’ I says : ‘ Roxy, it’s becaze I’m sech a 
pore, worthless feller that the white gals won’t look at 
me!’ The tears come right to her eyes, an’ she says? 


BELL-CROWN MAN. 


171 

* Mr. Wonnell, if I was white I would look at you.’ ‘ I 
believe you would,’ says I, ‘ becaze you’ve got a white 
heart, Roxy.’ ” 

“Jack, you’re a dog -gone smart lover,” said Levin. 
“ I didn’t think you had no kind of sense.” 

“Love-makin’ is the best sense of all,” said Jack, “it’s 
that sense that keeps the woods a-full of music, where 
the birds an’ bees is twitterin’ and hummin’ an’ a-matin’. 
Love is the last sense to come, after you can see, an’ hear, 
an’ feel, an’ they’re give to people to find out something 
purty to love. Love was the whole day’s work in the 
garding of Eden befo’ man got too industrious, an’ it’s 
all the work I do, an’ I hope I do it well.” 

“ Now what did Roxy tell you about Meshach Milburn 
and Judge Custis ?” 

“ You see, Levin, as I kept up the flower-givin’, I could 
see a little love start up in purty Roxy, but she didn’t 
understand it, an’ I was as keerful not to skeer it as if it 
had been a snow-bird hoppin’ to a crumb of bread. She 
would talk to me about her little troubles, an’ I listened 
keerful as her mammy, becaze little things is what wim- 
min lives on, an’ a lady’s man is only a feller patient 
with their little talk. The more I listened the more she 
liked to tell me, an’ I saw that Roxy was a-thinkin’ a 
great deal of me, Levin, without she or me lettin’ of it 
on. 

“ This mornin’ she came to the door with her eyes jest 
wiped from a-cryin’. Says I, ‘ Roxy, little dear, what ails 
you ?’ ‘ Oh, nothin’,’ says she, * I can’t tell you if thair is.’ 
‘ Here’s your wild flowers for Miss Vesty,’ says I, ‘beau- 
tiful to see !’ ‘ Oh,’ says Roxy, ‘ Miss Vesty won’t need 

’em now.’ Says I : ‘ Roxy, air you goin’ to have all that 
trouble on your mind an’ not let me carry some of it ?’ 
‘ Oh, my friend,’ she says, ‘ I must tell you, fur you have 
been so kind to me : don’t whisper it ! But my master 
is in debt to Meshach Milburn, an’ he's married Miss 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


1)2 

Vesty, an’ we think we’re all gwyn to be sold or made to 
live with that man that wears the bad man’s hat.’ Says 
1 : 4 Roxy, darling, maybe I kin buy you.’ 4 Oh, I wish 
you was my master,’ Roxy said. An’ jest at that minute, 
love bein’ oncommon strong over me this mornin’, I took 
the first kiss from Roxy’s mouth, an’ she didn’t say 
nothin’ agin it.” 

Here Jack Wonnell kissed the atmosphere several 
times with deep unction, and ended by a low whoop and 
whistle, and looked at Levin Dennis with one eye shut, 
as if to get Levin’s opinion of all this. 

“ Well,” Levin said, “ I never ain’t been in love yet. I 
’spect I ought to be. But mother is all I kin take keer 
of, and, pore soul ! she’s in so much trouble over me 
that she can’t love nobody else. I git drunk, an’ go 
off sailin’ so long, an’ spend my money so keerless, 
that if the Lord didn’t look out for her maybe she’d 
starve.” 

“Yes, Levin, you likes brandy as much as I likes the 
gals. You go off for tarrapin, an’ taters, an’ oysters, an’ 
peddles ’em aroun’ Prencess Anne, an’ then somebody 
pulls you in the grog-shops an’ away goes your money, 
an’ your mother ain’t got no tea and coffee.” 

“Jack,” said Levin, abruptly, “ do you believe in 
ghosts ?” 

“ I don’t know, Levin. If I saw one maybe I would, 
but I’m too trashy for ghosts to see me.” 

“ Well, now,” Levin said, “ there’s a ghost, or some- 
thing, that looks out for mother when I’m drunk or gone, 
an’ it leaves tea and coffee in the window for her.” 

“ Sho’ ! why, Levin, that’s Jimmy Phoebus ! He’s ben 
in love with your mother for years an’ she won’t have 
him, but he keep’s a hangin’ on. He’s your mother’s 
ghost.” 

“No, Jack. I thought it was till Jimmy come to me 
an’ asked me who I guessed it was. He was a little 


BELL-CROWN MAN. 


173 


jealous, I reckon. I said : ‘ It’s you, of course, Jimmy !’ 
‘ No,’ says he, ‘ by smoke! I don’t do any hokey-pokey 
like that. What I give, I go and give with no sneakin’ 
about it or prying into Ellanory’s poverty.’ He was right 
down mad, but he couldn’t find nothing out. So I think 
it may be the ghost of father, drowned at sea, bringing 
tea and coffee, and sometimes a dress, and a pair of 
shoes, too, to keep mother warm.” 

Levin Dennis, standing against the tiller, seemed to 
Jack Wonnell to be fair and spiritual as a woman, as his 
comely brow and large eyes grew serious with this rela- 
tion of his father’s mysterious fate. His dark auburn 
hair, in short ringlets parted in the middle, gave his sun- 
burnt countenance a likeness to some of the old gentle 
families with which he was allied, his father having been 
a son of younger sons, in a date when primogeniture 
prevailed in all this bay region ; and therefore, possessing 
nothing, he went into the war against England as a sailor, 
and his family influence obtained for him command of 
the new privateer launched on the Manokin, the Ida , 
which set sail with a good crew and superior armament, 
amid the acclaims of all Somerset, and, sailing past the 
Capes into the ocean with all her bunting flying, slid 
down the farther world to everlasting silence and the 
vapors of mystery. 

His widow waited long and patiently with this only 
boy, Levin, a scarcely lisping child, and stories of every 
kind were current ; that the captain had been captured 
and hanged by the enemy, and the ship burned or con- 
demned; that he had hoisted the black flag and become 
a pirate and quit the western world for the East India 
waters ; and finally, that the Ida foundered off Guiana and 
every soul was drowned. 

The widow, a beautiful woman, neglected by her hus- 
band’s connection, who were sullen at the loss of their 
investment and their expected profits from the vessel, 


i74 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


lived in the little house she had owned before her mar- 
riage, and sank into the plainer class of people, almost 
losing her identity with the ruling families to which her 
son was kin, but in her humbler class highly respected 
and solicited in marriage. 

She was still young and fair, and Jimmy Phoebus, a 
hale bachelor, and captain of a trading schooner, had 
endeavored to marry her for years, and held on to his 
hope patiently, exercising many kind offices for her, 
though his means were limited, and he had poor kin 
looking to him for help. She feared the absent lover 
might be alive and return to find her another’s wife. 

So her son, growing up without a father’s discipline, 
and being too respectable, it was supposed, to put to a 
trade or be indentured, lived by fugitive pursuits on land 
and water, hauling and peddling vegetables and provi- 
sions at times ; and now, by the gift of Jimmy Phoebus, he 
sailed his little sloop or cat-boat chiefly to carry terrapin 
to Baltimore. Rough sailor acquaintances, exposure, a 
credulous, easily led nature, and almost total neglect of 
school at a time when education was a high privilege, 
had made him wayward and often intemperate, but with- 
out developing any selfish or cruel characteristics, and 
being of an agreeable exterior and affable disposition, he 
fell a prey to any strangers who might be in town — gun- 
ners, negro buyers, idle planters, and spreeing overseers, 
many of whom hired his company and vessel to take 
their excursions; and, while loving his mother, and being 
her only reliance, she saw him slipping further and further 
into manhood without steadiness or education or fixed 
principles, or any female influence to draw him to do- 
mestic constraints. 

His slender, supple figure, and marks of gentility in 
his limbs, and shapely brow and large, gentle eyes, poorly 
consorted with ragged clothes, bare feet, and absolute 
dependence on chance employment, the latter becoming 


BELL-CROWN MAN. 1 75 

more precarious as his age and stature made more de- 
mands for money through his false appetites. 

“Jack,” said Levin Dennis, “ what do you mean by 
gittin’ money to buy Roxy Custis ? You never git no 
money.” 

“Won’t he give it to me? Him?” Jack Wonnell in- 
dicated the hatchway down which Joe Johnson had gone. 
“ He’s got bags of it.” 

“ Him ? Why, Jack, how much* money do you s’pose 
a beautiful servant like Roxy will fetch ?” 

“ Won’t that piece he's gwyn to give you buy her ?” 

“ Five dollars ? Why, you poor fool, she will bring five 
hundred dollars — maybe thousands. This nigger trader, 
with all his gold, would be hard pushed, I ’spect, to buy 
Roxy.” 

Jack looked downcast, and failed to wink or whistle. 

“ Gals like her,” said Levin, “ goes for mistresses to rich 
men, an’ sometimes they eddicates ’em, I’ve hearn tell, to 
know music, an’ writin’, an’ grammar, an’ them things.” 

“ And a pore man who wouldn’t abuse a gal most 
white like that, but would respect her an’ marry her, too, 
Levin, they makes laws agin him ! Maybe I kin steal 
Roxy ?” 

Here Jack whistled low, shut one eye with deep know- 
ingness, and grinned behind his bell-crown. 

“ Oh, you simpleton 1” Levin said. “ Where could you 
take her to?” 

“ Pennsylvany, Cannydy, Turkey, or some of them 
Abolition states up thar” — Jack Wonnell indicated the 
North with his finger. “Ain’t there no place where a 
white man kin treat a bright-skinned slave like that as 
if they both was a Christian ?” 

“ No,” answered Levin, “ not in this world.” 

The hero of the bell-crowns was much affected, and 
Levin thought he really was whimpering, though his va- 
cant grin was a poor frame for grief. 


1 76 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“Jack,” said Levin, “if what Roxy Custis told is true, 
the gal is the slave of your pertickler enemy, Meshach 
Milburn.” 

The wearer of the rival species of hat was “ badly 
sobered,” as Levin mentally expressed it, at this dismal 
solution of his gentle dreams of love. He arose and 
walked to the bow of the boat, and looked down into the 
flying waves over which the cat-boat skipped, as if he 
might seek the solution of his own disconnected yet 
harmless life in the bottom of the sound, among the 
oyster rocks. 

The water was now speckled with canoes and periau- 
gers (pirogues), and little sail-boats coming from Deil’s 
Island preaching, and before them rose out of the bay 
the low woody islands and capes which, with white straits 
between, enclose from the long blue nave of the Chesa- 
peake the scalloped aisle called Tangier Sound. Like 
pigeons and wrens around some cathedral, the wild-fowl 
flew in these involuted, almost fantastic, architectures of 
archipelago and peninsula, which, lying flat to the water, 
yet took ragged perspective there, as if some Gothic 
builder had laid his foundations, but had not bent the 
tall pines together, that grew above in palm-like groves, 
to make the groined roofs and arches of his design. 

Here could be seen the ospreys, sailing in graceful 
pairs above the herrings’ or the old wives’ shoals, taking 
with elegance and conscientiousness the daily animal food 
that even man demands, with all his sentiments and gos- 
pels. There the canvas-back duck, in a little flock, broke 
the Sabbath to dive for the wild celery that grows be- 
neath the sound. In yonder tree the bald eagle was 
starting out upon his Algerine work of vehemence and 
piety, to intercept the hawk and steal his cargo. The 
wild swan might be those faint, far birds flying so high 
over Kedge’s Straits, in the south, and the black loon, 
spreading his wings like a demon, disappears close to 


BELL-CROWN MAN. I 77 

the cat-boat, and rises no more till memory has forgot- 
ten him. 

Levin Dennis steered close to a point where he had 
been wont to scatter food for the black ducks, and draw 
them to the gunner’s ambush. Sheldrakes and goos- 
anders, coots and gulls, whifflers and dippers, made the 
best of Sunday, and bathed and wrote their winged pen- 
manship on the white sheet of water. 

Poor Jack Wonnell returning, with something on his 
face between a grin and a tear, said : 

“ Levin, didn’t I never harm nobody ?” 

“Not as I ever heard about, Jack. They say you 
ain’t got no sense, but you never fight nobody. Every- 
body kin git along with you, Jack !” 

“ No they can’t, Levin. Meshach Milburn hates the 
ground I tread on. If he know’d I was in love with lit- 
tle Roxy he’d marry her to a nigger.” 

“What makes him hate you so, Jack?” 

“ Becaze I wears my bell -crowns, and he wears the 
steeple-top hat. He thinks I’m a-mockin’ of him. Levin, 
I ain’t got no other kind of hat to wear. Meshach Mil- 
burn needn’t wear that air hat, but if I don’t wear a bell- 
crown I must go bareheaded. I bought that lot of hats 
with the only dollar or two I ever had, as they say a fool 
an’ his money is soon parted. The boys said they was 
dirt cheap. Now there wouldn’t be nothin’ to see wrong 
in my bell-crowns, ef all the people wasn’t pintin’ at ole 
Milburn’s Entail Hat, as they call it. Why can’t he, 
rich as a Jew, go buy a new hat, or buy me one ? I 
don’t want to mock him. I’m afeard of him ! He looks 
at me with them loaded pistols of eyes an’ it mos’ makes 
me cry, becaze I ain’t done nothin’. I’m as pore as 
them trash ducks,” pointing to a brace of dippers, which 
were of no value in the market, “ but I ain’t got no 
malice.” 

“ No, Jack. That trader could give you that bag of 
12 


178 THE ENTAILED HAT. 

gold to keep and it would be safe, becaze it wasn’t your 
own.” 

“ I ’spect I will have to go to the pore-house some 
day, Levin; my ole aunt, who takes keer of me, can’t 
live long, an’ I ain’t good fur nothin’. I can’t git no jobs 
and I run arrands for everybody fur nothin’, but the first 
money I git I’m gwyn to buy a new hat with. Ever 
sence I wore these bell-crowns Meshach hates me, an’ 
I hope he’s the only man that does hate me, Levin. I 
don’t think Meshach kin be a bad man.” 

“ How kin he be good, Jack?” 

“ Why, I have seen him in the woods when he didn’t 
see me, calling up the birds. Danged if they didn’t come 
and git on him ! Now birds ain’t gwyn to hop on a man 
that’s a devil, Levin. Do you believe he deals with the 
devil ?” 

“ I do,” said Levin ; “ I see sich quare things I believe 
in most anything quare. These yer tarrapins has got 
sense, and they’re no more like it than a stone. One 
night when we hadn’t nothin’ to eat at home, mother and 
me, an’ she was a sittin’ there with tears in her eyes 
wonderin’ what we’d do next day, I ree-collected, Levin, 
that there was four tarrapins down in the cellar, — black 
tarrapin, that had been put there six months before. I 
said to mother : ‘ 1 ’spect them ole tarrapins is dead an’ 
starved, but I’ll go see.’ 

“ I found ’em under the wood-pile, an’ they didn’t smell 
nor nothin’, so I took ’em all four up to mother an’ put 
’em on the kitchen table befo’ the fire, an’ I devilled ’em 
every way to wake up, an’ crawl, and show some signs 
of life. No, they was stone dead ! 

“ ‘Well, mother,’ says I, ‘put on your bilin’ water an’ 
we’ll see if dead tarrapin is fit fur to eat !’ She smiled 
through her cryin’, and put the water on, an’ when it be- 
gan to bubble in the pot, I lifted up one of them tarra- 
pins an’ dropped him in the bilin’ water, an’ Jack, I’ll be 


SABBATH AND CANOE. 


179 


dog-goned if them other three tarrapins didn’t run right 
off the table an’ drop on to the flo’ an’ skeet for that cel- 
lar door ! 

“ I caught ’em an’ biled ’em, an’ as we sat there eatin’ 
stewed tarrapin without no salt, or sherry wine, or coffee, 
or even corn - bread, we heard somethin’ like paper 
scratchin’ on the window, an’ mother fell back and 
clasped her hands, an’ said, ‘There, do you hear the 
ghost ?’ 

“ I rushed to the door an’ hopped into the yard, an’ 
not a livin’ creature did I see ; but there on the window- 
shelf was packages of salt, coffee, tea, and flour, and a 
half a dollar in silver ! I run back in the house, white as 
a ghost myself, an’ I cried out, ‘ Mother, it’s father’s sper- 
rit come again !’ 

“ She made me git on my knees an’ pray with her to 
give poor father’s spirit comfort in his home or in heav- 
en !” 


Chapter XVII. 

SABBATH AND CANOE. 

They now approached an island with low bluffs, on 
which appeared a considerable village, shining whitely 
amid the straight brown trunks of a grove of pine-trees ; 
but no people seemed moving about it, and they saw but 
a single vessel at anchor in the thoroughfare or strait 
they steered into — a canoe, which revealed on her bow, 
as they rounded to beside her, a word neither Levin nor 
Jack could read, except by hearsay : The Methodist. 

“Jack,” said Levin, “that was a big pine-tree the par- 
son hewed his canoe outen. She fell like cannon, going 
off inter the swamp. She’s a’most five fathom long, an’ 
a man can lie down acrost her. She’s to carry the Meth- 
odis’ preachers out to the islands.” 


l8o THE ENTAILED HAT. 

“ Hadn’t we better wake him up now ?” said Jack Won- 
nell ; “ I ’spect you want a drink, Levin ?” 

“ Yes ; I got a thirst on me like fire,” Levin exclaimed. 
“ I could do somethin’ wicked now, I ’spect, for a drink 
of that brandy.” 

Mooring against the shore, Levin went to his passenger* 
who was still in deep sleep stretched upon the bare floor 
of the hold or cabin — a brawny, wiry man, with strong 
chin and long jaws, and his reddish, dark beard matted 
with the blood that had spilled from his disfigured eye, 
and now disguised nearly one half his face, and gave him 
a wild, bandit look. 

“ Cap’n ! mister ! boss ! wake up ! We have come to 
Deil’s Island.” 

The long man, lying on his back, seemed unable to 
turn over upon his side, though he muttered in his stirred 
sleep such words as Levin could not understand : 

“ The darbies, Patty ! Make haste with them darbies ! 
Put the nippers on her wrists an’ twist ’em. Ha ! the 
mort is dying. Well, to the garden with her !” 

At this he awoke, and turned his cold, light eyes on 
Levin, and leaped to his feet. 

“ Did you hear me ?” he cried. “ It was only nums, 
kid, and jabber of a nazy man. Some day this sleep- 
talk will grow my neck-weed. Don’t mind me, Levin ! 
Come, lush and cock an organ with me, my bene cove !” 

“ If you mean brandy,” Levin said, “ I must have some 
or I’ll jump out of my skin. I feel like the man with the 
poker w r as a-comin’.” 

Joe Johnson gave him the jug and held it up, and the 
boy drank like one desperate. 

“How r the young jagger lushes his jockey,” the tall 
man muttered. “He’s in Job’s dock to-day. I’ll take 
no more. A bloody fool I was all yesterday, an’ oaring 
with my picture-frame. What place is this?” 

“ Deil’s Island, sir.” 


SABBATH AND CANOS. 


l8l 

“Ha! so it is. ’Twas Devil’s Island once, till the 
Methodies changed it fur politeness. This is the camp- 
meetin’, then ? Yer, Wonnell, take this piece of money, 
an’ go to some house an’ fetch us a bite of dinner. We’ll 
wait fur you.” 

The tall man led the way to the heart of the grove of 
pines, where the seeming town was found — a deserted 
religious encampment of durable wooden shells, or huts, 
in concentric circles of horseshoe shape, and at the open 
end of the circle was the preaching-stand, a shed elevated 
above the empty benches and pegs of removed benches, 
and which had a wide shelf running across the whole 
front for the preacher’s Bible, and to receive his thwacks 
as he walked up and down his platform. 

It looked a little mysterious now, with the many evi- 
dences of a large human occupation in the recent sum- 
mer, to see this naked town and hollow pulpit lying so 
suggestively under the long moan of the pine-trees, con- 
ferring together like dread angels in council, and ex- 
pressing at every rising breeze their impatience with the 
sins of men. 

At times the great branches paused awhile, scarcely 
murmuring, as if they were brooding on some question 
propounded in their council, or listening to human wit- 
nesses below ; and then they would gravely converse, as 
the regular zephyrs moved in and out among them, and 
pause again, as if their decision was almost dreaded by 
themselves. At intervals, a stern spirit in the pines 
would rise and thunder and shake the shafts of the trees, 
and others would answer him, and patience would have 
a season again. And so, with scarcely ever a silence 
that remained more than a moment, this council went on 
all day, continued all night, was resumed as the sun 
arose to comfort the world again, ceased not when the 
rainbow hung out its perennial assurance upon the storm, 
and typified to trembling worshippers the great synod of 


182 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


the Creator, in everlasting session, ready to smite the 
world with fire, but suspending sentence in the evergreen 
pity of God. 

In one of the deserted shells, or “ tents,” of pine, with 
neatly shingled roof, facing the preaching -booth, Joe 
Johnson and Levin Dennis found benches, and, at the 
tall man’s example, Levin also lighted a pipe, and looked 
out between the escapes of smoke at Tangier Sound, de- 
serted as this camp-ground on the Sabbath, since the 
worshippers had reached home from church in their ca- 
noes. He thought of his lonely mother in the town of 
Princess Anne, wondering where he was, and of the Sun- 
days fast speeding by and bringing him to manhood, with 
no change in their condition for the better, but penury 
and disappointment, a vague expectation of the dead to 
return, and deeper intemperance of the dead man’s son 
and widow’s only hope. He would have cried out with 
a sense of misery contagious from the music of those 
pines above him, perhaps, if the brandy had not begun to 
creep along his veins and shine bold in his large, girlish 
eyes. 

“Levin,” said Joe Johnson, “don’t you like me?” 

“ Yes, Mr. Johnson, I think I does, ’cept when you use 
them quare words I can’t understan’.” 

“I’m dead struck with you, Levin,” Joe Johnson said. 
“ I want to fix you an’ your mother comfortable. You’re 
blood stock, an’ ought to be stabled on gold oats.” 

He drew the canvas bag of eagles and half-eagles out 
of his trousers, and held its mouth open for Levin to 
feast his eyes. 

“ Thar,” said he, “ I told you, Levin, I was a-goin’ to 
give you one of them purties. I’ve changed my mind ; 
I’m a-goin’ to give you five of ’em !” 

“ My Lord !” exclaimed Levin ; “ that’s twenty-five dol- 
lars, ain’t it, sir?” 

“Oil korrect, Levin. Five of them finniffs makes a 


SABBATH AND CANOE. 183 

quarter of a hundred dollars — more posh, Levin, I ’spect, 
than ever you see.” 

“ I never had but ten, sir, at a time, an’ that I put in 
this boat, and Jimmy Phoebus put ten to it, an’ that paid 
for her.” 

“ What a stingy pam he was to give you only ten !” 
Joe Johnson exclaimed, with disgust. “Ain’t I a better 
friend to ye? Yer, take the money now /” 

He pressed the gold pieces ostentatiously upon the 
boy, who looked at them with fear, yet fascination. 

“ What am I to do to earn all this, Mr. Johnson ?” 

“ You comes with me fur a week, — you an’ yer boat. 
I charters you at that figger !” 

“ But— mother ?” 

“Well, when we discharge pigwidgeon, your friend 
with the bell shape — Jack Sheep yer — all you got to do, 
Levin, is to send the hard cole to your mother by him, 
sayin’, ‘ Bless you, marm ; my wages will excoos my 
face !’ ” 

“ Oh, yes, that will do. Mother will know by the money 
that I have got a long job, and not be a ’spectin’ of me. 
When do we sail, cap’n ?” 

“ How fur is it to Prencess Anne ? What time to-night 
kin you make it ?” 

Levin stepped out of the shanty and looked at the 
wind and water, his pulses all a-flutter between the strong 
brandy and the wonderful gold in his pocket ; and as he 
watched the veering of the pine-boughs to see which way 
they moved, their moaning seemed to be the voice of his 
widowed mother by her kitchen fire that day, saying, 
“ He is in trouble. Where is my son ? Why stays he, 
O my Levin ?” 

“The tide is on the stand, cap’n, an’ will turn in half 
an hour. It will take us up the Manokin with this wind 
by dark, ef we can get water enough in the thoroughfare 
without going around by Little Deil’s.” 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


184 

Johnson came out and made the same observations on 
wind and flood. 

“ I reckon it’s eighteen miles to the head of deep wa- 
ter on Manokin, Levin ?” 

“ Not quite, sir, through the thoroughfare ; it’s nigh 
eighteen. We’ve got four hours and a half of daylight 
yet.” 

“ Then stand for the head of Manokin an’ obey all my 
orders like a ’listed man, an’ I’ll git ye and yer mother a 
plantation, an’ stock it with niggers for you. Come, 
brace up again !” 

He offered the brandy-jug, and encouraged the boy to 
drink heartily, and affected to do the same himself, 
though it was but a feint. 

While they stood in the shelter of the camp cottage 
going through this pastime, a voice from near at hand 
resounded through the woods, and made their blood stop 
to circulate for an instant on the arrested heart. 

It was a voice making a prayer at a high pitch, as if 
intended to cover all the camp-ground and be heard to 
the outermost bounds. The sincerity of the sound made 
Levin Dennis feel that the camp might still be inhabited 
by some spiritual congregation which the eyes of profane 
visitors could not see — the remainder of the saints, the 
souls of the converted, or an ethereal host from above the 
solemn organ of the pines. 

The idea had scarcely seized upon him when a flutter- 
ing of wings was heard, and on the old camp -ground 
alighted a flock of white wild-geese. 

They balanced their large deacon and elder-like bod- 
ies upon the empty seats, and there set up as grave a 
squawking as if they were singing a hymn, with that in- 
different knowledge of harmony possessed by camp-meet- 
ing choristers. 

The accident of their coming — no unusual thing on 
these exposed islands — might have made untroubled 


SABBATH AND CANOE. 


185 

people only laugh, but it produced the contrary effect on 
both our visitors. Levin felt a superstitious fear seize 
upon him, and, turning to Joe Johnson, he saw that per- 
son with a face so pale that it showed his blood-gathered 
eye yet darker and more hideous, like a brand upon his 
countenance, gazing upon the late empty preaching- 
booth. 

There Levin, turning his eyes, observed a solitary man 
kneeling, of a plain appearance and dress, and with locks 
of womanly hair falling carelessly upon a large and al- 
most noble forehead, his arms raised to heaven and his 
voice flowing out in a mellow stream of supplication, in 
the intervals of which the geese could be heard quacking 
aloud and paddling their wings as they balanced and 
hopped over the camp-meeting arena. 

“Who’s he a prayin’ to?” Levin asked of Joe Johnson. 

“ Quemar !” muttered Johnson, as if he were terrified at 
something; “his potato-trap is swallerin’ ghosts ! Curse 
on the swaddler? The kid will whindle directly. Come, 
boy, come !” 

At this, seizing Levin’s hand, partly in persuasion, 
partly as if he wanted the lad’s protection, Johnson, 
fairly trembling, ran for the boat. 

Levin was frightened too ; the more that he saw the 
stronger man’s fear. As they dashed across the camp- 
ground the wild-geese took alarm, and, some running, 
some flying, scudded towards the Sound. A voice from 
the pulpit cried after the retreating men, but only to in- 
crease their fears, and when they leaped on board the 
Ellenora , Joe Johnson was livid with terror. He ran 
partly down the companion - way and stopped to look 
back: the wild-geese were now spreading their wings 
like a fleet of fleecy sails, and fluttering down the sound 
in gallant convoy. 

“What did you run for?” Levin said; “the jug of 
brandy is left. It was only Parson Thomas !” 


i86 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“You run first,” the man replied, gasping for breath, 
and a little ashamed. “What did he preach at me fur?” 

“ That’s the parson of the islands,” Levin said ; “ he 
started Deil’s Island camp-meetin’ last year, an’ his 
favo-rite preacher dyin’ jess as he got it done, ole Pap 
Thomas, who lives yer, comes out to the preachin’-stand 
sometimes alone, an’ has a cry and a prayer. The geese 
scared me, cap’n.” 

“Push off!” ordered Joe Johnson; “my teeth are 
most a -chatterin’ with the chill that mace cove give 
me.” 

He pulled up the anchor, hoisted the Jib, and showed 
such nervous apprehension that Levin subsided to man- 
aging the helm, and steered down the thoroughfare, or 
strait, which, for some distance, wound around the camp- 
meeting grove. 

“ Yer’s Jack Wonnell cornin’ with the jug and the din- 
ner. Sha’n’t we wait fur him ?” 

“ He’s got the kingdom-come cove with him ! No ; 
stop for nothing.” 

But the boat had to stop, as her keel scraped the mud 
in the almost dry thoroughfare, and a plain island man 
of benevolent, nearly credulous, face, hailed them, saying, 
stutteringly : 

“ Ne-ne-neighbors, do-don’t be sc-scared that a-way. 
We ain’t he-eee-thens yer. Br-br-brother Wonnell’s 
bringin’ your taters and pone.” 

“Come on, an’ be damned to you?” Johnson cried to 
Wonnell. “ What do we want with this tolabon sauce ?” 

“ Sw-w-wear not a-a-at all !” cried the parson of the 
islands. “’Twon’t 1-1-lift ye over 1-1-low tide, brother. 
Stay an’ eat, an’ t-t-talk a little with us. Why, I have 
seen that f-f-face before !” 

“Never in a gospel-ken before,” the plave-dealer mut- 
tered, with an oath. 

“ B-but it can’t be him,” spoke the island parson, with 


SABBATH AND CANOE. 1 87 

solemnity. “ Ole Ebenezer Johnson died s-s-several year 
ago.” 

“ Who was he ?” cried the slave-dealer, with a little re- 
spectful interest. 

“ Ebenez-z-zer Johnson,” Parson Thomas replied, with 
a mild and credulous countenance, “was the wickedest 
man on the Eastern Sho’ for twenty year. P-pardon me, 
brother, fur a likin’ ye to him, but somethin’ in ye y-y-yur,” 
passing his hand upon his skull, “ p-puts me in mind of 
him. It was hyur he was shot” — still keeping his hand 
upon the skull — “ through an’ through, an’ died the 
death of the sinner. I have p-p-put my f-finger through 
the two holes where the b-bullet come an’ went, an’ rid 
this w-world of a d-d-demon !” 

The story appeared to have a fascination for the slave- 
buyer, Levin Dennis thought, and Johnson exclaimed : 

“ Well, hod, did he ever run afoul of you ?” 

“ O y-y-yes,” answered the genial island exhorter, with 
obliging loquacity; “it was tw-w-enty-s-seven year ago 
that 1 see ole Eben-nezer Johnson come on the camp- 
ground of P-p-pungoteague with a mob of p-p-pirates to 
break up the f-f-fust Methodies camp-meetin’ ever held 
about these sounds. He was en-c-couraged by ole King 
Custis, f-f-father of our Daniel Custis, of Prencess Anne, 
who was a b-b-big man fur the Establish Church an’ 
d-dispised the Methodies. It was a cowardly thing to 
do, but while King C-C-Custis laughed and talked a’ 
durin’ of the p-p-preachin’, Eb-b-b-benezer Johnson start- 
ed a fight. The preacher c-c-cut his eye and saw who 
was a w-w-winkin’ at the interference. He was a 1-1-lion 
of the L-l-lord, and bore the c-c-commission of Immanuel. 
He knowed he was outen the s-s-state of Maryland and 
over in the V-v-vergeenia county of Ac-c-coinack, an’ 
that if the 1-1-aws was a little more t-t-tolerant sence the 
Revolutionary war the ar-r-ristocracy there was b-bitter 
as ever towards the people of the Lord. He t-t-urned 


i88 


THE ENTAILED HAt. 


from his preachin’ at last, right on King Custis, an’ he 
pinted his f-finger at him straight. The p-preacher was 
L-l-lorenzo Dow.” 

“ Wheoo !” Jack Wonnell exclaimed, with a coinciding 
grin ; “ I’ve hearn of him : a Yankee-faced feller, like a 
woman, with long braids an’ curls of hair failin’ around 
of his breast an’ back, and a ole straw hat, rain or shine.” 

“ That was L-l-lorenzo Dow,” the parson of the islands 
said. “ He turned on K-k-king Custis and screamed, 

‘ W-who art thou ? The L-lord shall smite thee, w-whited 
sepulchre, and m-mock thee in thy ch-h-hildren’s children, 
thou A-a-a-hab and thy J-j-jezebel !’ It was King Cus- 
tis’s wife he pinted at, too, the greatest lady and heiress 
in V-v-virgeenia. Sh-h-e f-f-ainted in f-fear or r-rage to 
hear the prophecy and insult of her. Then, turning on 
Eb-b-benezer Johnson, Lorenzo Dow cried out, ‘The 
dogs shall lie buried safer than his bones. Lay hold 
of him, brethren !’ And s-something in Lorenzo Dow’s 
t-trumpet-blast made every M-methodis’ a giant. They 
s-swept on Ebenezer Johnson, the bully of thr-ree states, 
an’ beat him to the ground, an’ raced his band to their 
boats, an’ then they th-hrew him into a little j-j-jail they 
had on the camp-ground, f-for safe keeping.” 

“What did King Custis do then, Pappy Thomas?” 
asked Levin. 

“Why, brethren, what did he do but use his f-f-family 
influence to g-git out a warrant for the preacher and his 
m-managers, on the ground of f-false imprisonment and 
s-slander ! Lorenzo Dow got over into Maryland s-safe 
from the warrant, but our p-presiding elder was p-put in 
jail till he could p-pay two thousand dollars fine. It al- 
most beggared the poor Methodies of that day to raise 
so much money, but, g-glory be to G-god ! we can raise 
it now any day in the year, and in the next g-generation 
we can buy our p-persecutors.” 

“ So Ebenezer Johnson, accordin’ to the autum bawl* 


SABBATH AND CANOE. 1 89 

er’s patter, got popped in the mazzard, my brother of the 
surplice ? But he didn’t climb no ladder, did he ?” 

The stuttering host seemed not to comprehend this 
sneering exclamation, and Levin Dennis said : 

“ King Custis wasn’t killed, was he, Pappy Thomas?” 

“ It was his children’s children his p-p-punishment 
was promised to,” the island parson said, “ and to the 
Lord a thousand y-years are but as d-days.” 

“The tide is fuller, Levin,” Joe Johnson cried, “your 
keel is clear. Now pint her for Manokin. So bingavast, 
my benen cove, and may you chant all by yourself when 
I am gone !” 

“ God bless the boys !” the islander cried, “ an’ k-keep 
them from the f-fire everlasting that is burning in your 
jug. And s-s-stranger, remember the end of Eb-b-benezer 
Johnson, an’ repent !” 

The old man, barefooted, stoop-shouldered, stuttering, 
yet with a chord of natural rhetoric in his high fiddle- 
string of a windpipe, stood looking after them till they 
passed down the thoroughfare under the jib-sail, and Joe 
Johnson did not say a word till some marsh brush inter- 
vened between them, he being apparently under a remnant 
of that panic which had seized him on the camp-ground. 

“ That’s a good man,” Levin Dennis said, giving the 
tiller to Jack Wonnell and raising the sail; “he preached 
to the Britishers when they sailed from Tangiers Islands 
to take Baltimore, and told ’em they would be beat an’ 
their gineral killed. He’s made the oystermen all round 
yer jine the island churches an’ keep Sunday. That 
stutterin’ leaves him when he preaches, and when he 
leads the shout in meetin’ it’s piercin’ as a horn.” 

“ He’s a bloody Romany rogue,” Joe Johnson mut- 
tered, “ to tell me such a tale ! But, kirjalis ! he cursed 
not me !” 

“ What language is that, Mr. Johnson ? Is it Dutch 
or Porteygee ?” 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


190 

“ It’s what we call the gypsy ; some calls it the Quaker. 
It’s convenient, Levin, when you go to Philadelfey, or 
Washinton, or New York, or some o’ them big cities, an’ 
wants to talk to men of enterprise without the quails 
a-pipin’ of you. Some day I’ll larn it to you if you’re a 
good boy.” 

They now sailed out of the thoroughfare into the broad 
mouth of the Manokin, where a calm fell upon air and 
water for a little while, and they could hear smothered 
music, as of drum-fish beneath the water, beating, “ thum ! 
thum !” and crabs and alewives rose to the surface around 
them, chased by the tailor-fish. The cat-boat drifted into 
the mouth of a creek where rock and perch were running 
on the top of the water, and with the tongs Jack Wonnell 
raised half a bushel of oysters in a few dips, and opened 
them for the party. Along the shores wild haws and wild 
plums still adhered to the bushes, and the stiff-branched 
persimmon-trees bore thousands of their tomato-like fruit. 
The partridges were chirping in the corn, the crow black- 
birds held a funeral feast around the fodder, some old- 
time bayside mansions stretched their long sides and 
speckled negro quarters along the inlets, half hidden by 
the nut-trees, and in the air soared the turkey-buzzard, 
like a voluptuary politician, taking beauty from nothing 
but his lofty station. 

“The ole Eastern Sho’,” Jack Wonnell said, with his 
animated vacancy, “ is jess stuffed with good things, Cap’n 
Johnsin. You kin fall ovaboard most anywhair an’ git a 
full meal. You kin catch a bucket of crabs with a piece 
of a candle befo’ breakfast, an’ shoot a wild-duck mos’ 
with your eyes shet.” 

“This country’s good for nothin’,” Joe Johnson said. 
“ Floredey is the land ! Wot kin a nigger earn for yer ? 
Corn, taters, melons : faugh ! Tobacco is a givin’ out, 
cotton won’t live yer. But Floredey is the hell-dorader 
of the yearth.” 


SABBATH AND CANOE. 


I 9 I 

“ What’s the hell-dorador ?” asked Levin. 

“ That’s Spanish or Porteygee for cheap niggers an’ 
cotton,” cried the trader. “ Cotton’s the bird !” 

“ I thought cotton was a wool,” Levin said. 

“ No, boy, cotton is a plant, growin’ like a raspberry 
on a bush, havin’ pushed the blossoms off an’ burst the 
pods below ’em, an’ thar it is fur niggers to pick it. 
Thar’s a Yankee in Georgey made a cotton-gin to gin it 
clean, an’ now all the world wants some of it.” 

“ Some of the gin ?” asked the irrelevant Wonnell. 

“ No, some of the cotton, Docto-r Green ! They can’t 
git enough of it. Eurip is crazy about it, but there ain’t 
niggers enough to pick it all. So I’m in the nigger trade 
an’ tryin’ to be useful to my country, an’ wot does I git 
fur it ? I git looked down on, an’ a nigger’s perfected 
fur a-topperin’ of me ! But never mind, I’ll be a big 
skull yet, an’ keep my kerrige — in Floredey.” 

“ What’s Floredey good fur ?” Levin asked. 

“ It’s full of nigger Injins, Simminoles, every one of 
’em goin’ to be caught an’ branded, an’ put at cotton an’ 
tobakker plantin’, an’ hog an’ cow herdin’. More nig- 
gers will be run in from Cubey, an’ all the free niggers 
in Delaware and up North will be sold, an’ you an’ me, 
Levin, is gwyn to own a drove of ’em an’ have a orchard 
of oranges an’ a thousand acres of cotton in bloom. 
We’ll hold our heads up. Your mother shall be switched 
to a nabob. My wife will be a shakester in diamonds. 
We’ll dispise Cambridge an’ Princess Anne, an’ there 
sha’n’t be a free nigger left on the face of the earth. 
We’ll swig to it !” 

The sick-headed yet fancy-ridden Levin drank again, 
and listened to the dealer’s marvellous tales of golden 
fruit on coasts of indigo, and palms that sheltered par- 
rots calling to the wild deer. Jack Wonnell took the 
helm when Levin lay down to sleep in the little cabin, 
still lulled by tales of wealth and lawless daring, and 


1 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


I92 

there he slept the deep sleep of the castaway, when the 
vessel grounded at dusk, in the sound of evening church- 
bells, at Princess Anne. 

“ Let him sleep,” Joe Johnson spoke; “yer, Wonnell, I 
give you tray of his strangers to take to his mommy,” 
handing out three gold pieces. “ Don’t you forgit it ! 
Yer’s a syebuck fur you,” giving Jack a sixpence. “ You 
an’ me will part company at Prencess Anne.” 


Chapter XVIII. 

UNDER AN OLD BONNET. 

Vesta had been sitting half an hour beside her uncon- 
scious husband, listening to his broken speech, and think- 
ing upon the rapidity of events once started on their 
course, like eaglets scarcely taught to fly before they at- 
tack and kill, when the sound of carriage-wheels, arrested 
at the door, called her to the window, and Tom, the mock- 
ing-bird, which had been comparatively quiet since he 
found his master snugly cared for, now began to hop 
about, fly in the air, and sing again : 

“ Sweet — sweet — sweetie ! come see ! come see !” 

Vesta saw Meshach’s wiry, deliberate colored man step 
down and turn the horses’ heads, and there dropped from 
the carriage, without using the carriage-step, at a leap 
and a skip, a young female object whose head was invis- 
ible in an enormous coal-scuttle bonnet of figured blue 
chintz. However quick she executed the leap, Vesta ob- 
served that the arrival had forgotten to put on her stock- 
ings. 

Before Vesta could turn from the window this sin- 
gular object had darted up the dark stairs of the old 
storehouse and thrown herself on the delirious man’s 
bed : 


UNDER AN OLD BONNET. 


193 

“ Uncle, Uncle Meshach ! air you dead, uncle ? Wake 
up and kiss your Rhudy !” 

She had kissed her uncle plentifully while awaiting the 
same of him, and the attack a little excited him, without 
recalling his mind to any sustained remembrance, though 
Vesta heard the words “dear child,” before he turned his 
head and chased the wild poppies again. Then the 
young female, ejaculating, 

“Lord sakes! Uncle don’t know his Rhudy!” pulled 
her black apron over her head and had a silent cry — a 
little convulsion of the neck and not an audible sigh be- 
sides. 

“She weeps with some refinement,” Vesta thought; 
and also observed that the visitor was a tall, long-fin- 
gered, rather sightly girl of, probably, seventeen, with 
clothing the mantuamaker was guiltless of, and a hoop 
bonnet, such as old people continued to make in remem- 
brance of the high-decked vessels which had brought the 
last styles to them when their ancestors emigrated with 
their all, and forever, from a land of modes. The bonnet 
was a remarkable object to Vesta, though she had seen 
some such at a distance, coming in upon the heads of the 
forest people to the Methodist church. It resembled the 
high-pooped ship of Columbus, which he had built so 
high on purpose, the girls at the seminary said, so as to 
have the advantage of spying the New World first ; but it 
also resembled the long, hollow, bow-shaped Conestoga 
wagons of which Vesta had seen so many going past her 
boarding-school at Ellicott’s Mills before the late new 
railroad had quite reached there. As she had often 
peered into those vast, blue-bodied wagons to see what 
creatures might be passengers in their depths, so she 
took the first opportunity of the blue scuttle being jolted 
up by the mourner to discern the face within. 

It was a pretty face, with a pair of feeling and also 
mischievous brown eyes, set in the attitude of wonder the 

13 


194 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


moment they observed another woman in the room. The 
skin was pale, the mouth generous, the nose long, like 
Milburn’s, but not so emphatic, and the neck, brow, and 
form of the face longish, and with something fine amid 
the wild, cow-like stare she fixed on Vesta, exclaiming, 
in a whisper, 

“ Lord sakes ! a lady’s yer 1” 

Then she threw her apron over the Conestoga bonnet 
again, and held it up there with her long fingers, and 
long, plump, weather-stained wrists. 

Vesta looked on with the first symptoms of amuse- 
ment she had felt since the morning she and her mother 
laughed at the steeple-crown hat, as they looked down 
from the windows of Teackle Hall upon the man already 
her husband. That morning seemed a year ago ; it was 
but yesterday. 

“Old hats and bonnets,” Vesta thought, “ will be no 
novelties to me by and by. This family of the Milburns 
is full of them.” 

Then, addressing the new arrival, Vesta said, 

“This is your uncle, then ? Where do you live?” 

“ I live at Nu Ark ,” answered the miss, taking down 
the black apron and looking from the depths of the bon- 
net, like a guinea-pig from his hole. 

“ If she had said ‘ the Ark ’ without the ‘ New,’ ” Vesta 
thought, “ it would have seemed natural.” 

“ Your uncle has a high fever,” Vesta said, kindly ; “ he 
is not in danger, we think. It was right of you to come, 
however. Now take off your bonnet. What is your 
name ?” 

“ Rhudy — I’m Rhudy Hullin, ma’am.” 

“ Rhoda — Rhoda Holland, I think you say.” 

“ Yes’m, Rhudy Hullin. I live crost the Pookamuke, 
on the Oushin side, out thar by Sinepuxin. I don’t live in 
a great big town like Princess Anne ; I live in Nu Ark.” 

At this the girl carefully extricated her head from the 


UNDER AN OLD BONNET. 


195 


Conestoga scuttle, looked all over the bonnet with pride 
and anxiety, and then carefully laid it on the top of her 
uncle’s hat-box. 

“Uncle Meshach give it to me,” she said, with a sly in- 
clination towards the sick bed. “Misc Somers made it. 
Uncle, he bought all the stuff; Misc Somers draw’d it. 
Did you ever see anything like it?” 

“ Never,” said Vesta. 

“ Well, some folks out Sinepuxin said it was a sin and 
a shame — sech extravagins; but Misc Somers she said 
Uncle Meshach was rich an’ hadn’t but one Rhudy. It 
ain’t quite as big as Misc Somers’s bonnet, but it’s 
draw’d mour.” 

Here Rhoda gave a repetition of what Vesta had 
twice before observed — an inaudible sniffle, and, being 
caught in it, wiped her nose on her apron. 

“Take my handkerchief,” Vesta said, “you are cold,” 
and passed over her cambric with a lace border. 

“What’s it fur?” Rhoda asked, looking at it supersti- 
tiously. “ You don’t wipe your nuse on it, do you? Lord 
sakes ! ain’t it a piece of your neck fixin’ ?” 

Vesta felt in a good humor to see this weed of nature 
turn the handkerchief over and hold it by the thumb and 
finger, as if she might become accountable for anything 
that might happen to it. 

“ I got two of these yer,” she said ; “ Misc Somers 
made ’em outen a frock. They ain’t got this starch on 
’em ; they’re great big things. I always forgit ’em. My 
nuse wipes itself” 

“ Now come near the fire and warm your feet,” said 
Vesta ; “ for your ride from the oceanside, this cold morn- 
ing, through the forests of the Pocomoke, must have chilled 
you through. Lay off your blanket shawl.” 

Rhoda laid the huge black and green shawl, that 
reached to her feet, on the green chest, and smoothed it 
with evident pride. 


196 THE ENTAILED HAT. 

“ Uncle Meshach bought that in Wilminton,” she said; 
“ ain’t it beautiful ! I never wear it but when I come 
over yer or go to Snow Hill. Snow Hill’s sech a proud 
place !” 

She had a way of laughing, by merely indenting her 
cheeks, without a sound, just as she expressed the sense 
of pain; the only difference being in the beaming of her 
eyes,; and Vesta thought it had something contagious in 
it. She would laugh broadly and in silence, as if she had 
been put on behavior in church, and there had adopted a 
grimace to make the other girls laugh and save herself 
the suspicion. 

As she pulled her skirts down to her feet, Vesta’s ob- 
servation was confirmed that Rhoda had no stockings on, 
and she could not help exclaiming, 

“ My dear child, what possessed you to ride this Octo- 
ber morning only half dressed? You might catch your 
death.” 

Rhoda caught her nose on the half sniffle, raised and 
dimpled her cheeks in a sly laugh, and cried, 

“ Lord sakes ! you mean my legs ? Why, I ain’t got 
but two pairs of stockings, an’ Misc Somers is a wearin’ 
one of ’em, and the ould pair’s in the wash. It’s so 
tejus to knit stockings, and sech fun to go barefoot, that I 
don’t wear ’em unless Misc Somers finds it out. Why, 
the boys can’t see me !” 

She grimaced again so naturally and engagingly that 
Vesta had to laugh quite aloud, and saw meantime that 
the young woman’s oft-cobbled shoes covered a slender 
foot a lady might have envied. 

“Now, Rhoda,” Vesta said, almost indignantly, “why 
did you not ask your wealthy uncle for some good yarn 
stockings ?” 

“ Him ? Why, ma’am, he’s got so many pore kin, if 
he begin to give ’em all stockings, he’d go barefoot him- 
self.” 


UNDER AN OLD BONNET. 


197 


“ Has he other nieces like you ?” 

“ No.” The girl quietly grimaced, with her brown eyes 
full of laughter. “There’s plenty of others, but none 
like Rhudy ; the woods is full of them others.” 

“ So you are the favorite? Now, what was your uncle 
going to do with all his money?” 

“ Lord sakes !” Rhoda said ; “ he was going to marry 
Miss Vesty with it. That’s what Misc Somers said.” 

The mocking-bird had been striking up once or twice 
in the conversation, and now pealed his note loud : 

“Vesta, she! she! she! she-ee-ee !” 

A tingle of that superstition she had felt more than 
once already, in her brief knowledge of this forest family, 
went through Vesta’s veins and nerves, and she silently 
remarked, 

“ How little a young girl knows of men around her — 
what satyrs are taking her image to their arms ! These 
people knew he loved me, when I knew not that he ever 
saw me.” 

She addressed the niece again : 

“Rhoda, did your uncle say he loved Miss Vesta?” 

“ No’m. He never said he luved nothing ; but I heard 
Tom, the mocking-bird, shout ‘Vesty,’ and saw a lady’s 
picture yonder between grandpar and grandmem, and 
told Misc Somers, and she says, ‘Your Uncle Meshach’s 
in luve !’ Oh, I was right glad of it, because he was so 
sad and lonesome !” 

The fountain of sympathy burst up again in Vesta’s 
heart, and she felt that there were compensations riches 
and station knew not of in humble alliances like hers. 

“ Rhoda,” she said, going to the young girl and put- 
ting her hand upon her soft brown hair, “you have not 
noticed the new picture of a lady hanging up here, have 
you ?” 

“ No’m, not yet. Everything is so quare in this room 
sence I saw it last, I hain’t seen nothin’ in it but you. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


I98 

Now I see the carpet, an’ the brass andirons, an’ the 
chiney, an’ — Lord sakes ! is that a picture? Why, I 
thought it was you.” 

“ It is, Rhoda. I am Vesta ; I am your new aunt.” 

The girl made one of her engaging, dimpled, silent 
laughs, as if by stealth again, changed it into a silent cry 
by a revulsion as natural, and rose to her feet and took 
Vesta in her arms. 

“ I’m so glad, I will cry a little,” Rhoda simpered, her 
eyes all dewy ; “ oh, how Misc Somers will say, ‘ 1 found 
it out first !’ ” 

Tom kept up a whistling, self-gratulating little cry, as 
if he had his own thoughts : 

“ Sweety ! sweety ! sweet ! Vesty, see ! see ! see !” 

Vesta felt a chain of happy thoughts arise in her mind, 
which she expressed as frankly as the girl of forest prod- 
uct had spoken, that she might not retard the welcome 
of these homely friendships : 

“Yes, Rhoda, I am thankful to find a social life open 
to me where there seemed no way, and brooks and play- 
mates where everything looked dry. You come here like 
a sunbeam, God bless you ! I can hear you talk, and 
teach you what little I know, and we will relieve each 
other, watching him.” 

She felt a slight modification of her joy at this remind- 
er, but the bird seemed to teach her patience, as he sug- 
gested, hopping and flying in the air, 

“ Come see ! come see ! come see !” 

“ Yes,” thought Vesta, “ come a?id see l It is good coun- 
sel. I begin to feel the breaking of a new sense, — curios- 
ity about the poor and lowly. My education seems to 
have closed my observation on people of my own race, 
who daily trode almost upon my skirts, and whom I nev- 
er saw — whom it was considered respectable not to see — 
while even my colored servants enjoyed my whole confi- 
dence because they were my slaves. Yet, in misfortune, 


UNDER AN OLD BONNET. 


199 


to these plain white people I must have dropped ; and 
then Roxy and Virgie, sold to some temporary rich man, 
would have been above me, slaves as they would con- 
tinue ! How false, how fatal, both slavery and proud 
riches to the republicans we pretend to be ! Compelled 
‘ to see ’ at last, I shall not close my eyes nor harden my 
heart.” 

The maid from Newark had meantime quietly in- 
spected the rag carpet, the cloth hangings, the fairy rock- 
er, and all the acquisitions of her uncle’s abode, and 
Vesta again observed that she was of slender and wil- 
lowy shape and motion, unaffected in anything, not for- 
ward nor* excited, and with the shrewd look so near 
ready wit that she could make Vesta laugh almost at will. 
Vesta showed her how to administer cool drink and the 
sponging to the sufferer, and he saw them together with 
a look of inquiry which the febrile action soon drove 
away. 

“ Are your parents living, Rhoda ?” 

“No’m; they’re both dead. My mother was Uncle 
Meshach’s sister, and she married a rich man, who biled 
salt and had vessels an’ kept tavern. Father Hullin died 
of the pilmonary; mar died next. Misc Somers brought 
me up whar the tavern used to be. It ain’t a stand no 
more. Uncle Meshach owns it.” 

“ Is it a nice place ?” 

“Now it ain’t as nice as it use to be, Aunt Vesty” — 
the girl glided easily over what Vesta thought might be 
a hard word — “sence the shews don’t stop thar no 
mour.” 

“ The shoes ? What is that ?” 

“ The wax figgers and glass-blowers, and the strongis’ 
man in the world. Did you ever see him ?” 

Vesta said, “ No, dear.” 

“ I saw him,” Rhoda said, with a compression of her 
mouth and a gleam of her eyes. “ He bruke a stone with 


200 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


his fist and Misc Somers kep the stone, and what do 
you think it was ?” 

“ Marble ?” 

“No’m ; chork! He jest washed the chork over with 
a little shell or varnish or something, and, of course, it 
bruke right easy; so he wasn’t the strongest man in the 
world at all, and if Misc Somers ever see him, she’ll tell 
him so.” 

“ Is it a little or a large house, Rhoda ?” 

“Oh, it’s a magnificins house, twice as big as this, with 
the roof bent like an elefin’s back, an’ three windows in 
it — rale dormant window's, that looks like three eyes out- 
en a crab, and a gabil end three rows of windows high, 
and four high chimneys. The rope-walker said it was 
fit to be a rueyal palace. Then thar’s the kitchen an’ 
colonnade built on to it. It’s the biggest house, I 
reckon, about Sinepuxin. That rope-walker’s a mountin- 
bank.” 

“ A mountain bank ? You mean a mountebank — an 
impostor ?” 

“ Yes’m,” — the mouth shut and the eyes flashed again. 
“ He allowed he’d break the rupe after he’d walked on it, 
and he said it wasn’t stretched tight enough, and went 
along a feeling of it ; and Misc Somers found out every 
time he teched of it he put on some bluestone water or 
somethin’ else to rot it, so, of course, he bruke it easy. 
But Misc Somers’s going to tell him, if he comes agin, 
he’s a mountin-bank. Lord sakes ! she ain’t afraid.” 

“ So, since it has ceased to be a tavern, dear, you see 
no more jugglers ?” 

“ The last shew there,” Rhoda said, “ was the cannin- 
bils and the missionary. The missionary had converted 
of ’em, and they didn’t eat no more ; but he tuld how 
they used to eat people ; and they stouled a pony outen 
the stables an’ run to the Cypress swamp, and thar they 
turned out to be some shingle sawyers he’d just a stained 


UNDER AN OLD BONNET. 


201 


up. Misc Somers is a-waitin’ for him. Lord sakes ! she 
don’t keer.” 

“ And so you were an orphan, brought up at the old 
roadside stage -house at Newark? And who is Mrs. 
Somers ?” 

“Misc Somers, she’s a ole aunt of Par Hullin. She 
an’ me live together sence par and mar died of the pil- 
monary. Oh, I have a passel of beaus that takes me over 
to the Oushin on Sinepuxin beach, outen the way of the 
skeeters, an’ thar we wades and sails, and biles salt and 
roasts mammynoes. Aunt Vesty, I can cut out most any 
girl from her beau ; but, Lord sakes ! I ain’t found no 
man I love yet.” 

“ I’m glad of that,” said Vesta, “ because you will then 
be satisfied with Princess Anne. They say your uncle 
will be sick here several weeks, and we can help each 
other to make him well. Now he is waking.” 

Milburn opened his eyes and sighed, and saw them to- 
gether, and Rhoda held back considerately while the 
young wife approached the bed. He looked at her with 
a bewildered doubt. 

“I thought they said you had gone forever,” he mur- 
mured. 

“No, I am come forever, or until you wish me gone.” 

“ I told them so,” he sighed ; “ I said, ‘ She has high 
principle, though she can’t love me.’ ” 

“ Uncle Meshach, give Auntie time !” cried Rhoda, 
with a quick divination of something unsettled or misun- 
derstood. “ Don’t you know your Rhudy ? Even I was 
afraid of you till I was tuke sick and you thought it was 
the pilmonary and nursed me.” 

“ You have a good niece,” Vesta said, as her husband 
kissed the stranger; “and we shall love each other, I 
hope, and improve each other.” 

“Yes, that will be noble,” he replied. “Teach her 
something ; I have never had the time. Oh, I am very 
ill; at a time like this, too !” 


202 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Be composed, Mr. Milburn,” the bride said ; “ it is 
only Nature taking the time you would not give her, and 
which she means for us to improve our almost violent 
acquaintance. I shall be very happy sitting here, and 
wish you would let your niece be with me ; I desire 
it.” 

He tried to smile, though the strong sweat succeeding 
the fever broke upon him from his hands to his face. 

“ She is yours,” he said ; “ the best of my poor kin. Do 
.-not despise us !” 

Vesta drew her arm around Rhoda and kissed her, 
that he might see it. 

“ What goodness !” he sighed, and the opening of his 
pores, as it let the fever escape, gave him a feeling of 
drowsy relief which Vesta understood. 

“ Now let us turn the covers under the edges, Rhoda,” 
she said, “ and put your blanket-shawl over him, and he 
will get some natural sleep.” 

He turned once, as if to see if she was there, and closed 
his eyes peacefully as a child. 

“ Now, Rhoda,” said Vesta, in a few minutes, “ I hear 
papa’s carriage at the door, and, while he comes up, I 
shall ride back to see my mother and get a few things at 
home.” 

“ Who is your poppy, Aunt Vesty ?” 

“Don’t you know him? — Judge Custis, who lives in 
Princess Anne.” 

“ Jedge Custis ! Why, Lord sakes ! he ain’t your par, 
is he ? Aunt Vesty, he’s one of my old beaus.” 

The Judge brought with him Reverend William Tilgh- 
man, and Vesta, as she was retiring, introduced Rhoda 
to both of them : 

“ This is Miss Rhoda — Mr. Milburn’s niece.” 

Judge Custis, a trifle blushing, took both of Rhoda’s 
hands : 

“ Ha, my pretty partner and dancing pupil ! How 


UNDER AN OLD BONNET. 20 $ 

are our friends at St. Martin’s Bay and Sinepuxent? 
Many a sail and clam-bake we have had, Rhoda.” 

“You’re a deceiver,” Rhoda cried, with a dimpling 
somewhere between glee and accusation. “ I’m goin’ to 
plosecute you, Jedge, fur not tellin’ of me you was a mar- 
ried man. My heart’s bruke.” 

“ Who could remember what he was, Rhoda, sitting all 
that evening beside you at — where was it?” 

“The Blohemian glass-blowers,” Rhoda cried; “the 
only ones that ever visited the Western Himisfure. 
Jedge,” with sudden impetuosity, “that little one, with 
the copper rings in his years, wasn’t a Blohemian at all. 
He lived up at Cape Hinlupen, an’ Misc Somers see him 
thar when she was a buyin’ of herring thar. She’s goin’ 
to tell him, when she catches him at Nu-ark.” 

The young rector observed the flash of those bright 
eyes following the pleasing dimples, and the slips of or- 
thography seemed to him never less culpable coming from 
such lips and teeth. 

“ William,” said Vesta, “ come around this afternoon, 
and let us have our usual Sunday reading-circle. Mr. 
Milburn will be awake and appreciate it, as he is one of 
your most regular parishioners. Rhoda, you can read ?” 

“ Oh, yes’m. Misc Somers, she’s a good reader. She 
reads the Old Testamins. The names thar is mos’ too 
long for me, but I reads the Psalms an’ the Ploverbs 
right well.” 

“ Very well, then, we will read verse about, so that Mr. 
Milburn can hear both our voices and his favorite minis- 
ter’s, too. You’ll come, papa ?” 

“ Yes, if I can. We have had a love-feast at Teackle 
Hall this morning, and your sister from Talbot is down, 
but I think I can get off.” 

“ Lord sakes !” Rhoda said, looking at Mr. Tilghman 
candidly; “you ain’t a minister now? Not a minister of 
the Gospil ?” 


204 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Unworthily so, Miss Rhoda.” 

“ Well, I don’t see how you was old enough to be con* 
victed and learn it all, unless you was a speretual meri- 
kle. Misc Somers see one of ’em at Jinkotig. They 
called him the enfant phrenomeny. He exhorted at five 
year old, and at seven give his experyins.” 

“ Rare, Miss Rhoda,” the rector said, hardly able to 
keep his reverence in amusement at her impetuosity. 

“ Oh, he made a wild excitemins, Aunt Vesty. The 
women give each other their babies to hold while they 
tuk turns a-shouting. ‘ Yer, Becky, hold my baby while 
I shout!’ says one. ‘Now, Nancy, hold mine while I 
shout !’ To see that little boy up thar tellin’ of his expe- 
ryins was meriklus, an’ made an excitemins like the high 
tides on Jinkotig that drowns ’em out. But, Aunt Vesty, 
that little phrenomeny was a dwarf, twenty year old, an’ 
Misc Somers found it out and told about it.” 

“ I’ll be bound Mrs. Somers knows !” exclaimed the 
Judge. 

“That she do,” continued Rhoda, earnestly, with a 
slight sniffle of a well-modelled nose and a dimpling that 
argued to Vesta something to come. “ Misc Somers says 
you held one of them babies, Jedge, to let its mother 
shout, and pretended to be under a conviction ; an’ that 
you backslid right thar and was a-whisperin’ to the other 
mother. Lord sakes ! Misc Somers finds it all out.” 

“ Well,” said the Judge, finding the laugh against him, 
“I never did better electioneering than that day. By 
holding that baby five minutes I made a vote, and the 
mother will hold it twenty years before she will make a 
vote.” 

“Misc Somers says, Jedge, you hold the women long- 
er than thar babies ; but I told her you was in sech con- 
viction you didn’t know one from the other. ‘ Oh,’ she 
says, ‘he’s sly and safe when he gits over yer on the 
Worcester side.’ Misc Somers, she’s dreadful plain.” 


UNDER AN OLD BONNET. 


William Tilghman, during the continuation of 
loquy, looked with interest on the /two young 
Vesta, the elder by two or three years, and richly enc. 
with the lights of both beauty and accomplishments ; ^ 
maid from the ocean side, plainer, and with no ornament 
within or without ; but he could foresee, under Vesta’s 
fostering, a graceful woman, with coquetry and fascina- 
tion not wholly latent there ; and, as his eyes met Rho- 
da’s, he interpreted the look that at a certain time of life 
almost every maiden casts on meeting a young man — “ Is 
he single ?” She shot this look so archly, yet so strong, 
that the arrow wounded him a very little as it glanced 
off. He smiled, but the consciousness was restored a 
moment that he was a young man still, as well as a 
priest. Love, which had closed a door like the portal of 
a tomb against him, began to come forth like a glow-worm 
and wink its lamp athwart the dark. 

“ She must come to Sunday-school,” he thought, “ if 
she stays in Princess Anne. We will polish her.” 

The mocking-bird, not being satisfied with any lull in 
the conversation, “pearted up,” as he saw Vesta with- 
draw, and cried, 

“ ’Sband ! ’Sband ! Meee — shack ! Mee-ee-ee-shack ! 
See me ! see me ! Gents ! gents ! gents ! genten ! Sweet ! 
sweetie ! sweetie ! Hoo ! hoo ! See ! see ! Vesty, she ! 
Ha ! ha !” 

He flew in the air over his stirring master, as if doubt- 
ing that- all was well since the strange lady, who had 
been so quiet all the morning, was gone. 

“That bird almost speaks,” said William Tilghman; 
“ I have spent many an hour teaching them, but never 
could make one talk like that.” 

“ Maybe you had too much to teach to it,” Rhoda Hol- 
land said ; “ it ain’t often they can speak, and they 
mustn’t have much company to learn well. Uncle Me- 
shach haint had no company but that bird for years. J 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


he bird got mad and lonesome, and jest hooted 
at him.” 

/hat is it saying now?” Tilghman asked. “See! 

*8 almost convulsive in its attempts to say something.” 

The gray bird, as impressive as a poor poet, seemed 
nearly in a state of epilepsy to bring up some burden 
of oppressive sound, and, as they watched it, almost tipsy 
with the intoxicant of speech, fluttering, driving, and strik- 
ing in the air, it suddenly brought out a note liquid as 
gurgling snow from a bird-cote spout : 

“ L-l-lo-love ! love ! love ! Ha ! ha ! L-l-love !” 

“ Well done, old bachelor J” Judge Custis remarked, in 
spite of his fagged face, for good resolution and yester- 
day’s unbracing had left him somewhat limp and haggard 
still. “ He brings out ‘ love ’ as if he had made a vow 
against it, but the confession had to come. Many a monk 
would sing the same if instinct could find a daring word 
in his chorals. These mockers of Maryland were cele- 
brated in the British magazines a hundred years ago, and 
I recall some lines about them.” 

He then recited : 

** ‘ His breast whose plumes a cheerful white display, 

His quivering wings are dressed in sober gray, 

Sure all the Muses this their bird inspire, 

And he alone is equal to a choir. 

Oh, sweet musician ! thou dost far excel 
The soothing song of pleasing Philomel : 

Sweet is her song, but in few notes confined, 

But thine, thou mimic of the feathery kind ! 

Runs thro’ all notes : thou only know’st them all, 

At once the copy and th’ original !’ ” 

“ That’s magnificins !” Rhoda exclaimed, with quiet 
delight ; “ who is ‘ fellow Mil,’ Jedge ?” 

“ Oh, that’s the British nightingale. These American 
mocking-birds surpass them as one of our Eastern Shore 
clippers outsails all the naval powers of Europe.” 

“I’ve hearn ‘The British Nightingale,’” Rhoda said, 


UNDER AN OLD BONNET. 


207 


with a flash of her eyes ; “ he was a blind man with green 
specticklers that sang at Nu-ark, ‘ ’ome, sweet ’ome’ — 
that’s the way he plonOunced it — an’ it affected of him so, 
he had to drink a whole tumbler of water, an’ Misc Som- 
ers, spying around to see if he was the rale nightingale, 
she found it was gin in that glass, and told about it.” 

Rhoda made even the minister laugh, as she indented 
her cheeks and cast a sheep’s glance at him and the 
Judge. He marvelled that such forest English could be 
resented so little by his mind, but he thought, 

“Never mind, she may have had no more lessons than 
the bird, whose difficulty is even beautiful. But see ! Mr. 
Milburn is wide awake. My friend, how do you feel ?” 

“ Better, better !” murmured Milburn. “ I cannot lie 
here any more. There is money, money , gentlemen, de- 
pendent on my getting about.” 

He started up with the greatest resolution and confi- 
dence, and fell upon his head before he had left the cov- 
erlets- 

“ No, no !” said the Judge, as he and Tilghman picked 
Milburn up and arranged him as before. “ Your will is 
matched this time, my brave son-in-law ! You are back 
in the hut you have consumed, among the fires thereof, 
and the avenging blast of Nassawongo furnace burns in 
your veins and cools you in the mill-pond alternately. 
Lie there and repent for the injury you have done a spot- 
less one !” 

If Meshach heard this it was never known, but the un- 
conscious or impulsive utterance strengthened the impres- 
sion with Tilghman and Rhoda that Vesta’s marriage was 
not altogether voluntary, and produced on both a feeling 
of deeper sympathy and respect for her. 

“Judge,” the young minister said, “do good for evil, 
if evil there has been ! I have given him my hand sin- 
cerely ; perhaps you can relieve his mind of some busi- 
ness care.” 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


2 08 

“ Mr. Milburn,” the Judge said, when he saw the res* 
inous eyes roll towards him again out of that swarthy 
face, now pale with weakness, “ I am out of a job now, 
and can work cheap. Let me do any errand for you.” 

A look of petulance, followed by one of inquiry, came 
up from Milburn’s eyes, and he pressed his head between 
his wrists, as if to bring back the blood that might propel 
his judgment. They heard him mutter, 

“No business prudence — yet plausible, persuasive — 
might do it well.” 

The Judge spoke now, with some firmness : 

“ Milburn, there is no use of your rebelling. Here you 
are and here you will lie till nature does her restoration, 
assisted by this medicine I have brought you. You must 
undergo calomel, and this quinine must set on its work 
of several weeks to break up the regularity of these 
chills. In the meantime, as your interests are also Ves- 
ta’s, and Vesta’s are mine, let me serve her, if not you.” 

The positive tone influenced the weakened system of 
the patient. He looked at all three of the observers, and 
said to Tilghman, “William, I might send you but for your 
calling; leave me with the Judge a little while, both you 
and Rhoda.” 

Rhoda took the Conestoga bonnet from the top of the 
Entailed Hat box, and arrayed herself in it, to the rector’s 
exceeding wonder. 

“Let’s you and me go take a little walk,” she said, 
putting her hand in his arm with a quiet confidence in 
which was a spark of Meshach’s will. “ I ain’t afraid of 
Princess Anne people, if they are proud. Misc Somers 
says King Solomons was no better than a lily outen the 
pond, and said so himself.” 

The young man, sincere as his humility was, blushed 
a little at the idea of walking through his native town 
with that bonnet at his side, he being of one of the self- 
conscious, high-viewing families of the old peninsula — his 


UNDER AN OLD BONNET. 


209 

grand-uncle the staff-officer of Washington, and messen- 
ger from Yorktown to Congress with the news, “ Corn- 
wallis has fallen but it was his chivalric sense, and 
not his piety, which immediately dispelled the last touch 
of coxcombry, when he felt that a lady had requested 
him. 

“ With happiness, Miss Holland and he did not feel 
one shrinking thought again as he ran the gantlet of the 
idle fellows of the town, many of them his former vagrant 
playmates. Rhoda was perfectly happy. He would have 
taken her to his grandmother’s, with whom he kept house, 
but that aristocratic old dowager might say something, he 
considered, to destroy Rhoda’s confidence in her elegant 
appearance and easy vocabulary ; and they walked past 
Teackle Hall, where Vesta saw them, and opened the 
door and made them come in and eat a little. Rhoda 
at first showed some uneasiness under this great pile of 
habitation, but Vesta was so natural and gracious that 
the shyness wore off, and, at a fitting moment, the bride 
said : 

“ Rhoda, my dear, there is a bonnet up-stairs I expect 
to wear this winter, and I want to try it on you, whom I 
think it will particularly become.” 

Rhoda’s quiet eyes flashed as she saw the new article 
and heard Vesta praise it, upon her head. The old bon- 
net had received a cruel blow, in spite of Mrs. Somers. 

Tilghman, too, accused himself that he felt a little re- 
lieved when he escorted Rhoda back to Meshach’s in an- 
other bonnet, and Vesta followed, with her great shaggy 
dog, Turk; she not unconscious — though serene and 
thoughtfully polite to all she knew — of people peering at 
her in wonder and excitement from every door and win- 
dow of the town. The news was working in every house- 
hold, from the servants in the kitchens to the aged peo- 
ple helped to their food with bib and spoon, that the 
famed daughter of Daniel Custis.was the prize of the 

14 


210 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


junk dealer and usurer in “old town ” by the bridge, who 
had enslaved a wife at last. 


Chapter XIX. 

THE DUSKY LEVELS. 

The new son-in-law, left alone with Judge Custis, asked 
to be propped up in bed, and nothing was visible that 
would support his pillow but the aged leather hat-box 
that Custis, with a wry face, brought to do duty. 

“My illness is unfortunate,” he gasped; “not only to 
me, but to the new ties I have formed ; to the mutual in- 
terest my wife and I have in making up your losses on 
Nassawongo furnace, which we are all the poorer by to 
that amount ; and to a suitor whose cause I have taken 
up. I have bought an interest in a great lawsuit.” 

“Then the day of reckoning of your enemies has 
come, Milburn.” 

“ Not yet,” said the sick man, with a proud flash of his 
eyes, “ unless I am no merchant and you are no lawyer, 
and the first I will not concede.” 

“ Nor I the second,” exclaimed the Judge, with some 
pride and temper. 

“You were once a good lawyer, if visionary,” resumed 
the money-lender, with scant ceremony. “ Had we been 
able to respect each other we might have been confeder- 
ated in things valuable to ourselves and to our time and 
place. But that is past, and you do not possess my con- 
fidence as my legal agent, my attorney. I wish you to 
get another advocate for me.” 

“ I am willing to be useful, even without your compli- 
ments,” the Judge said, remembering his Christian reso- 
lution. “ We will not quarrel, if I can serve you.” 

“ I do not wish to hurt your feelings, but my strength 


THE DUSKY LEVELS. 


2 1 1 


is not great enough for unmeaning flattery. This mar- 
riage was so dear to my heart that I have put it before 
a very large interest about which I have no time to lose, 
and still am helpless upon this bed. I will trust you to 
do my errand. Go to that chest, Judge Custis, and you 
will find a package of papers in the cedar till at the end. 
Bring them here.” 

As the Judge opened the old chest a musty smell, as 
of mummies wrapped in herbs, ascended into his nose, 
and he saw some faded clothes, as those of poor people 
deceased, male and female, lying within. The mocking- 
bird piped a noisy warning as he raised the lid of the 
till and saw the desired papers among a parcel of spot- 
ted and striped bird-eggs : 

“ Come see ! come see ! Meshach ! he ! he ! sweet !” 

“ Now open the window yonder/’ said Meshach, taking 
the papers, “ and let Tom fly out. He starts my nerves. 
Wh-oo-t, whi-it, Tom !” 

The mocking-bird, spreading its wings and tail, and 
striking obstinately towards its master a minute, as he 
whistled, flew out of the window and settled in the old 
willow below, and had a Sunday-afternoon concert, call- 
ing the passing dogs by name, whistling to them, and de- 
ceiving cats and chickens with invitations they familiarly 
heard, to eat, to shoo, to scat, and to roost. 

“ If he regulates his wife like that bird,” the Judge 
spoke to himself, “ she will fly to heaven soon.” 

Milburn opened the papers, counted them, and handed 
them to his father-in-law. 

“The papers will be plain to you, Judge Custis, after 
I have made a few words of explanation. You well 
know that the canal between the Delaware and Chesa- 
peake is finished, and vessels are now passing through it 
from bay to bay. It is taking one hundred dollars a day 
tolls, and twenty vessels already go past between sun 
and sun, though the size of the shipping of the cities it 


212 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


connects has not yet been adapted to its proportions. It 
has been a cheap and quick work, costing something 
above two millions of dollars, taking only five years of 
time j and yet it has begun its mercantile life by a cheat 
upon a man to whom it is indebted as a promoter and 
contractor, and to whom I have advanced the means to 
compel justice and damages.” 

“ Well, well, Milburn ; I must pay tribute to your en- 
terprise. The era of these great carrying corporations 
has barely begun, and you stake your little fortune against 
one of them that is backed by the great city of Philadel- 
phia !” 

“ The canal passes through the state of Delaware, in 
which is three quarters of its little length of only fourteen 
miles, and there a suit will be free, to some extent, from 
the corruptions they might exercise in Pennsylvania ; and, 
if successful there, we can more easily attach the tolls of 
the canal. I have no more faith in the Legislature of 
Delaware than of any other state ; kidnappers sit in its 
responsible seats, and it licenses lotteries to make prizes 
of its own honor. But we shall try our case before a 
simple jury, which will be flax in the hands of one lawyer 
in that state, if we can secure him ; but hitherto he has 
refused my contractor, and will not take the case.” 

“ Why,” said the Judge, “you must mean Clayton, the 
new senator.” 

“ That is the man,” Milburn continued, stopping for 
strength and breath. “ He is finely educated, I hear, at 
the colleges and law schools, and possesses a remarkable 
power over the agricultural and mixed races of that small 
state, whom he thoroughly understands by sympathy and 
acquaintance. I heard him once in court, at Georgetown, 
wither and confound the confederated kidnapping influ- 
ences of the whole peninsula, and, against the will and 
intention of the jury, prevail upon their fears and sensi- 
bilities to find a bold rogue guilty of stealing free men 


THE DUSKY LEVELS. 


213 


of color — a rogue who was in this room, unless it is a de- 
lusion of my fever, this very day, and with whom I fan- 
cied I had been in collision somewhere.” 

“You only knocked him down with a brick, after Sam- 
son had done it with his fist, and then the fellow came to 
me for shelter, afraid you would pursue him at law, and I 
suppose he did an errand for my servants to this abode.” 

The Judge looked around upon the abode as if he had 
used the most respectable word he could possibly apply 
to it. 

“ I will compromise with such scoundrels as that one,” 
Milburn spoke, “only when I am afraid of them. But, 
to conclude my statement ; for reasons of timidity, or 
doubts of success, or political ambition — something I 
cannot fathom — Mr. Clayton will not hearken to my debt- 
or, and I have not disclosed my own interest in the suit. 
He is at home from Washington, and an appointment 
has been made with him at his office in Dover to-morrow. 
You see I am unable to keep it, and I have no one else 
to send, and information reaches me that the canal com- 
pany, discovering my money in the contractor’s bank ac- 
count, intends to retain Clayton forthwith. If you set 
out this afternoon, you can reach Laureltown for bed- 
time. It is at least forty miles thence to Dover, and you 
might ride it to-morrow by noon, with push, and in that 
case you have a chance to beat the Philadelphia emis- 
sary several hours. I have five thousand dollars at stake 
already ; I believe I shall get damages of forty times five 
if I can retain that man.” 

“I am ready to start at once,” said the Judge, rising 
up ; “ I can read these papers on the way. The saddle 
was my cradle, and I have a good horse. My valise can 
follow me on the stage to-morrow.” 

“Unless you see the best reasons for it, my name is 
not to be mentioned to any one as a party to this suit ; I 
am not popular with juries.” 


214 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Then good-bye, Milburn,” said the Judge, but did not 
extend his hand. “ As you treat my daughter, may God 
treat you !” 

“Amen,” exclaimed the money-lender, as the Judge’s 
feet passed over the door-sill below, and he sank back to 
the bed, exhausted again. 

##*#**# 

While the proceedings described occupied the white 
people, the servants, Roxy and Virgie, in their clean 
Sunday suits, loitered around the bridge behind the store, 
or strayed a little way up the Manokin brook, hearing 
the mocking-bird rend his breast in all the ventriloquy of 
genius. 

“ Virgie,” said Samson Hat, meeting them under the 
willow-tree, “ when I carries you off and marries you, I 
s’pect you’ll be climbin’ up in my loft, too, makin’ it 
comfable fo’ me.” 

“You ought to be ashamed of yourself, you old, black, 
impertinent servant of darkness !” Virgie said. “ Indeed, 
when I look at a man, he must be almost white — not all 
white, though, like Roxy’s beau.” 

“ Who’s he, Roxy ?” Samson asked. 

Roxie blushed, and said she had no beau, and never 
wanted one. 

“ Roxy’s beau,” says Virgie, “is that poor, helpless Mr. 
Jack Wonnell. He comes to see her every day. He’s 
devotion itself. Indeed, Samson, if you are going to 
marry me, and Roxy marry all those bell-crown hats, we 
shall cure the town of its two greatest afflictions.” 

“ Bad ole hats ?” asks Samson. 

“Roxy’ll burn all the bell-crowns for her beau, and 
I’ll bury the steeple-hat and you that cleans it, and the 
people will be so glad they’ll set me free and I can go 
North.” 

“ Look out, Virgie ; I’ll put dat high-crown hat on you 
like Marster Milburn put de bell on de buzzard. He 


THE DUSKY LEVELS. 


215 


went up to dat buzzard one day wid a little tea-bell in his 
hand an’ says, ‘ Buzzard, how do ye like music ?’ Says 
de buzzard, tickled wid de compliment, ‘ I’m so larnid 
in dat music, I disdains to sing ; I criticises de birds dat 
does.’ ‘ Den,’ says Mars Milburn, ‘ I needn’t say to ye, 
P’ofessor Buzzard, dat dis little bell will be very pleasin’ 
to yo’ refine taste.’ Wid dat he takes a little piece o’ wire 
an’ fastens de tea-bell to de bird’s foot an’ says, ‘ Buzzard, 
let me hear ye play !’ De buzzard flew and de bell tin- 
kled, an’ all de other buzzards hear some’in’ like de cow- 
bell on de dead cow dey picked yisterday, an’ dey says, 
e Who’s dat a flyin’ heah ? Maybe it’s a cow’s ghose !’ 
So dey up, all scart, an’ cross’d de bay ; an’ de buzzard 
wid a bell haint had no company sence, becoz he stole a 
talent he didn’t have, and it made everybody oncomfi- 
table.” 

. “ I’ve heard about Meshach belling a buzzard,” said 
Roxy, “ but they say he’s got something on his foot, too, 
like a hoof — a clove foot. Did you ever see it, Sam- 
.son ?” 

“ He never tuk his foot off,” said the negro, warily, 
“ to let me see it. Dat bell on de buzzard, gals, is like 
white beauty in a colored skin ; it draws white men and 
black men, like quare music in de air, but it makes de 
pale gal lonesome. She can’t marry ary white man ; she 
despises black ones.” 

The shrewd lover had touched a chord of young pain 
in the hearts of both those delicate quadroons. Both 
were so nearly white that the slight corruption increased 
their beauty, rounded their graceful limbs, plumpened 
their willowy figures, gave a softness like mild night to 
their expressive eyes, and blackened the silken tassels of 
their elegant long hair. No tutor had taught them how to 
walk, — they who moved on health like skylarks on the air. 
Faithful, pure-minded, modest, natural, they were still 
slaves, and their place in matrimony, which nature would 


21 6 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


have set among the worthiest — superior in love, superior 
in maternity, superior in length of days and enjoyment 
—was, by the freak of man’s caste, as doubtful as the mer- 
maid’s. 

Roxy was a little the shorter and fuller of shape, the 
milder and more pathetic ; in Virgie the white race had 
left its leaner lines and greater unrelenting. She said 
to Samson, with the pique her reflections inspired, 

“I never thought the first man to make love to me 
would be as black as you.” 

“ De white corn years,” says Samson, “ de rale sugar- 
corn, de blackbird gits. None of dem white gulls and 
pigeons gits dat corn. A white feller wouldn’t suit you, 
Virgie.” 

“ Why ?” says Roxy, “ Virgie was raised among white 
children ; so was I. We didn’t know any difference till 
we grew up.” 

“ Dat was what spiled ye,” Samson said ; “ de colored 
man is de best husban’. He ain’t thinkin’ ’bout busi- 
ness while he makin’ love, like Marster Milburn. The 
black man thinks his sweetheart is business enough, long 
as she likes him. He works fur her, to love her, not to 
be makin’ a fool of her, and put his own head full of 
hambition, as dey calls it. You couldn’t git along wid 
one o’ dem pale, mutterin’ white men, Virgie. Now, 
Roxy’s white man, he’s most as keerless as a nigger ; he 
kin’t do nothin’ but make love, nohow. Dat’s what she 
likes him fur.” 

“ He’s as kind a hearted man as there is in Princess 
Anne,” Roxy spoke up. “ I never thought about him ex- 
cept as a friend. I know I sha’n’t look down on him be- 
cause he likes a yellow girl, for then I would be looking 
down on myself.” 

“ Virgie,” said Samson, “ I reckon I’m a little ole, but 
you kin’t fine out whar it is. Ye ought to seen me fetch 
dat white hickory of a feller in de eye yisterday, and he 


THE DUSKY LEVELS. 


217 


jest outen his teens. I know it’s a kine of impedent to 
be a courtin’ of you, Virgie, dat’s purtier dan Miss Yesty 
herself — ” 

“Nobody can be as pretty as Miss Vesta,” Virgie cried, 
delighted with the compliment; “she’s perfection.” 

“ As I was gwyn to say,” dryly added Samson, “ I nev- 
er just knowed what I was a lettin’ Marster Milburn keep 
my wages fur, till he married Miss Vesty, and then I sot 
my eyes on Miss Vesty’s friend an’ maid, and I says, 
‘ Gracious goodness ! dat’s de loveliest gal in de world. 
I’ll git my money and buy her and set her free, and may- 
be she’ll hab me, ole as I am.’ ” 

“ She will, too, Samson, if you do that, I believe,” Roxy 
cried; “see how she’s a-smiling and coloring about it.” 

Virgie’s throat was sending up its tremors to her long- 
lashed eyes, and a wild, speculative something throbbed 
in her slender wrists and beat in the little jacket that was 
moulded to her swelling form : the first sight of freedom 
in the wild doe — freedom, and a mate. 

“ My soul !” Roxy added, “ if poor Mr. Wonnell could 
set me free, I think I might pity him enough to be his 
wife.” 

Samson used his opportunity to stretch out his hand 
and take Virgie’s, while she indulged the wild dream. 

“ Dis han’ is too purty,” he said, “ to be worn by a 
slave. Let me make it free.” 

She turned away, but the negro had been a wise lover, 
and his plea pierced home, and it struck the Caucasian 
fatherhood of the bright quadroon. 

“Freedom is mos’ all I got,” the negro continued; 
“it’s wuth everything but love, Virgie. Dat you got. 
Maybe we can swap ’em and let me be yo’ slave.” 

“ Don’t, don’t !” pleaded Virgie, pulling her hand very 
gently. “ I’m afeard of you ; you clean the Bad Man’s 
hat.” 


2 l8 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


Chapter XX. 

CASTE WITHOUT TONE. 

Judge Custis was well out of town, riding to the north, 
when the little reading-circle assembled, without his pat- 
ronage, over the old store, and the young minister direct- 
ed it. In the warm afternoon the windows were raised 
till Milburn’s chill began to set in again, and they could 
hear the mocking-bird, in his tree, tantalizing the great 
shaggy dog Turk by whistling to him, 

“Wsht! wsht! Come, sir! come, sir! Sic ’em ! sic 
’em ! wh-i-it ! sic ’em, Turk ! wsht ! wh-i-i-t ! Sirrah ! 
Ha ! ha !” 

Turk would run a little way, run back, see nobody, 
watch all the windows of the store, and finally he seemed 
to think the spot was haunted, or unreliable in some way; 
for he would next run to the open store door, and bark, 
run back, and, from a distance, watch the hollow dark with- 
in, as if a vague enemy lived there, mocking his obedient 
nature and keeping his mistress captive. Turk was a 
setter with mastiff mixing, worth a little for the hunt and 
more for the watch, but as an ornament and friend worth 
more than all ; he was so impartial in his favors as to 
like Aunt Hominy and Vesta about equally, and often 
slept in the kitchen before the great chimney fire. 

“ Do we worry you, Mr. Milburn, by reading here ?” 
Vesta asked. 

“ No, my darling. It is so kind of you to bring music 
to my poor loft.” 

William Tilghman opened his Bible at a place marked 
by a little ribbon-backed bristol card, inscribed in Vesta’s 
childhood by her learning fingers, “ Watch with me.” He 


CASTE WITHOUT TONE. 


219 


thought of his cousin, now fluttering between her betrayal 
to this Pilate and her crucifixion, and caught her eyes 
looking at the Bible-marker, as if saying to him and to 
the forest maiden, “ Watch with me.” 

Tilghman started the reading, Vesta followed, and 
Rhoda had to do her part, also ; but she required to labor 
hard to keep up, as the chapter was in the Acts, descrip- 
tive of Paul’s voyage towards Rome, and had plenty of 
hard words and geography in it. At one verse, Rhoda’s 
reading was like this : 

“ And — when — we — had — sailed — slowl - li — many — 
days — and — scare — scare — skar — skurse — I declar’, Aunt 
Vesty, this print is blombinable ! — scace — Oh, yes, scace- 
ly — scarce — were — come — over — against — Ceni — Snide 
— Snid — Mr. Tilghman, what is this crab-kine of word? 
Cnidus ? Well, I declar’ ! a dog couldn’t spell that ; it 
looks like Snyder spelled by his hired man — against 
Cnidus — the — wind — not — snuffers — no, snuffering (here 
Rhoda executed the double sniffle) — yes, didn’t I say 
snuffering ? I mean suffering — suffering — us — we — sailed 
— under — I can’t spell that nohow ; nobody kin !” 

“ ‘ Sailed under Crete,’ dear,” assisted Vesta. 

“ Sailed under — Crety — over — against — Sal — Sal — 
Salm — oh, yes, psalms ! No : Sal Money.” 

“Salmone,” explained the rector, not daring to look 
up ; “ 4 we sailed under Crete over against Salmone ; and, 
hardly passing it, came unto a place which is called the 
Fair Havens, nigh whereunto was the city of Lasea.’ ” 

“ Lord sakes !” exclaimed Rhoda, putting out her cres- 
cent foot, on which was Vesta’s worked stocking, “ did 
they have Fair Havens in them days ? Was it this one 
over yer on the Wes’n Shu ?” 

“ No,” answered Tilghman ; “ Fair Havens was always 
a ready name for sailors finding a good port in trouble.” 

“Thar ain’t no good port out thar on the Oushin side 
now but Monroe’s Inlet, outen Jinkotig. The rest of ’em 


220 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


gits filled up, an’ kadgin’s the on’y way to kadge through 
of ’em, Misc Somers says.” 

“ She means warping, or pulling over a shoal inlet by 
a rope to an anchor, as the water lifts the vessel.” 

“ Yes, you know, Mr. Tilghman.” Rhoda cried, delight- 
ed ; “ that’s kadgin’ — pullin’ over the bar by the anchor 
line. You’re all agroun’, can’t git nowhar, air a-bumpin’ 
on the bar, an’ the breakers is cornin’ dreadful in your 
side : you’ll break all up if you stay thar. So you git 
the little anchor — the little one is better than ary too big 
a one — an’ put it in the yawl an’ paddle acrost the bar 
an’ sot her, an’ them aboard pulls as the billers lifts ye, 
and so they keep her headed in, and, kadging, kadging, 
bumpety-bump, at las’ you go clar of the bar an’ come 
home to smooth haven in Sinepuxin.” 

“Yes, my sisters,” appended the young minister, “we 
need often to kedge home, to warp over the bars of life, 
and Hope, in ever so little an anchor, helps a little, if we 
do not lose the line. Little hopes are often better than 
great ones, for o’er -great hopes swamp little vessels. 
Even hope must be artfully shaped and skilfully dropped 
to take hold of the unseen bottoms of opportunity. All 
of us have entertained burdensome hopes, heavy anchors, 
and they would not hold us against the breakers ; but 
there may be little hopes, carried in advance of us, that 
will draw us into pleasant sounds and bays.” 

“We owe to you, Rhoda, this comforting hope,” said 
Vesta, “ and, while you are with us, we shall teach you to 
read more confidently.” 

Vesta then sang Charles Wesley’s hymn : 

Jesus, in us thyself reveal ! 

The winds are hushed, the sea is still, 

If in the ship Thou art. 

Oh, manifest Thy power divine ; 

Enter this sinking church of Thine, 

And dwell in every heart.’ ” 


CASTE WITHOUT TONE. 


221 


The sounds of her singing reached the people, ram- 
bling curiously around on Sunday afternoon to see the 
principals in the surprising marriage they had but lately 
heard of, and, as she ended, Mr. Milburn called her, say- 
ing, 

“It is time for you to leave me till to-morrow.” 

“ Is that your desire ?” 

“ It is, kind lady. I have a servant-man, Samson, used 
to all my work, and you can hear of my condition through 
your slave girls, going and coming. I want you to feel 
free as ever, though my wife at last. I did not seek you 
to cloud your morning, but to share your sunshine. Go 
to Teackle Hall, and there I will come when I am strong- 
er. At no time do I ever wish you to sleep in this old 
stable.” 

“ May I come and sit with you to-morrow, sir ?” 

“Oh, do so ! I must see you a little day by day.” 

“May I take Rhoda with me ?” 

“Yes, if you will do it. She is a poor girl, but that is 
not her fault.” 

Vesta bent and touched his forehead with her lips, and, 
as she drew back, he raised his cold hand and put a piece 
of paper in hers. 

“ Present my love to your mother,” he said, in a chill ; 
“and return her the losses Judge Custis has named to me 
as her portion in Nassawongo furnace. The amount is in 
this check, which I give you, although it is Sunday, be- 
cause it represents no business among any of us, but an' 
act of peace.” 

“You are an honorable man,” Vesta said; “I have 
cost you dearly.” 

“ It is the bumping of a few years on the bar,” Me- 
shach answered, trying to smile ; “ be you my anchor out 
in calm water, and I will try to draw to you some day. 
It is not the price I pay that troubles me ; it is the price 
you are paying.” 


222 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ I am deeply interested in you,” Vesta said ; “ if I 
should say more than that, it would not now be true.” 

“Thank you for that much,” Milburn said ; “ even your 
pity is a treasure, and I thank God that I have made so 
much progress. Before you go, let my bird come in, and 
then shut the window, to keep the night-hawks and owls 
from finding him.” 

He managed, between his rising paroxysms of the chill, 
to whistle a note or two, and Tom flew in the window and 
fluttered viciously around his head, as if to be revenged 
for exile, and then, leaping on the old hat-box, set up a 
show performance, in which were all the menagerie of 
town and field, and, stopping a little while to hear the 
bird sing her name again, Vesta and her friends with- 
drew. 

Mrs. Custis was found in her bedroom, much improved 
in spirits, but highly nervous. 

“ Oh, my poor, martyred, murdered idol !” she screamed, 
as Vesta came in ; “ are you alive ? Is the beast dead ? 
Don’t tell me he dares to live.” 

“ Yes, mamma, here are his teeth,” Vesta said, when 
she had kissed her mother warmly. “ He has sent you 
a check for all your lost money, and his love, and me to 
live here with you in Teackle Hall. Liberty, restitution, 
as you name it, and his affection to both of us : is he not 
a gentleman now ?” 

Mrs. Custis eagerly took the check. 

“ Do you believe it is good, precious? Maybe he sent 
it to deceive me while he could take advantage of your 
gratitude. Oh, these foresters are devils ! I wish I had 
the money for it.” 

“It is good for everything he has, mamma. Not to 
pay it would make him a bankrupt. He gave it to me 
almost with gallantry. Indeed, he is the most singular 
man I ever knew.” 

“ That is the case with all pirates,” said Mrs. Custis : 


CASTE WITHOUT TONE. 


223 


“something in the female nature attracts us to lawless 
men, who take what they want — ourselves included. We 
were, I suppose, originally, just seized and appropriated, 
and are looking out for the appropriator to this day. 
But you, Vesta, with the Baltimore blood in you, do not 
expect to play the Sabine bride tamely like that — to 
defend your spoiler and reconcile him to your breth- 
ren ?” 

“ I was thinking it was the Baltimore blood that made 
me appreciate Mr. Milburn, mamma. The Custises were 
not traders.” 

“ Pshaw ! the Custises were libertines, unless history 
belies them ; they had else no popularity in the scamp 
court of Charley-over-the-water. He thought the daugh- 
ter of any gentleman in his followmg was made for his 
mistress, and a large percentage of the said damsels 
thought he was right.” 

“ Mr. Milburn is no Cavalier, I can see that,” Vesta 
said ; “ I am attracted to him by elements of such strength 
and simplicity that I fancy he is a Puritan.” 

“ Puritan fiddlestick !” Mrs. Custis said, putting Mil- 
burn’s check in her bosom and pinning it in there, and 
looking vigilantly at the pin afterwards. “ Now, my great 
comfort, my only McLane ! do not idealize this forester as 
of any beginning whatsoever. It is all wrong. Thou- 
sands of convicts were exported to Chesapeake Bay from 
the slums of London, Bristol, Glasgow, and other places, 
and propagated here like the pokeweed. With instincts 
of larceny, and, possibly, a little rebellion in it, your man 
has robbed this house of your person ; if he should also 
take your heart, the shame would be upon us.” 

“ Oh, mother, you are unforgiving !” 

“ Of course I am ; I am Scotch.” 

“ You have not one son-in-law but this who would give 
you back the large amount your husband has misspent — 
not one who could do it but at a sacrifice you would not 


224 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


permit. For you and papa, to restore your faith in each 
other, I married our stranger creditor, forcing him to the 
altar rather than he me ; and he has already proved him- 
self of more delicacy than you, if I am to believe you are 
in your right mind. No, I am no McLane.” 

“ You are not, if you do not use their Scotch-Irish per- 
severance to get the better of Meshach Milburn. You 
have obtained a marriage settlement with him, now have 
it confirmed, and sue out your divorce before the Legis- 
lature! Publicly as you have been profaned, ask the 
State of Maryland for reparation. The McLanes, the 
Custises, and all their connections, from the Christine 
River to the James, will storm Annapolis, make your 
cause, if necessary, a political issue, and the courts of 
this county will give you damages out of this beast’s un- 
popular wealth.” 

Vesta looked at her mother with astonishment. 

“What would become of my self-respect, my maiden 
name, if I made that show of my private griefs, mother ?” 

“ Why, you would be a heroine. Every old lover, of 
whom there are so many eligible ones, would feel his zeal 
return. A romance would attend your name wherever 
the Baltimore newspapers are taken, and you would be 
as great a heroine as Betty Patterson.” 

“That disobedient girl?” Vesta, still in astonishment, 
exclaimed. 

“ I saw her when the bride of Jerome Bonaparte. She 
was not half as lovely as you ! If Jerome had seen you 
— you were not born, then, and I was in society — he 
would never hav$ looked at Betty. But, you see, she 
forced a settlement out of the Emperor, husbanded the 
income of it, and she is rich, and freer to-day than if she 
had become a French Bonaparte.” 

“ Weak as they may be in many things, I am a Custis,” 
Vesta spoke, with pale scorn. “ I would not drag my name 
through the tobacco-stained lobbies of Annapolis to wear 


CASTE WITHOUT TONE. 


225 


the crown of Josephine. The word I gave, in pity of my 
parents, to the man who is now my husband, to become 
his wife, I would not take back to my dying day, unless 
he first denied his word. I believe there is such a thing 
as honor yet. Mother, you fret my father by such princi- 
ples.” 

“They are the principles of your uncle, Allan Mc- 
Lane.” 

“ A man I shrink from,” Vesta said, “ although he is 
your brother. His unfeeling respectability, his unchange- 
ableness, his want of every impulse but hate, his appro- 
priation of our family honor, as if he was our lawgiver 
and high-sheriff, his secretiveness, formal religion, and 
mysterious prosperity, I do not appreciate, much as I 
have tried to be charitable to him. I do not like Balti- 
more as I do the Eastern Shore ; it is fierce, hard, and 
suspicious.” 

“You shall not run down Baltimore before me,” Mrs. 
Custis cried, hotly. “ It is a paradise to this region ; 
and comparing Meshach Milburn to your uncle is blas- 
phemy.” 

“I have on my finger, mother, his mother’s ring.” 

“A pretty object it is,” said Mrs. Custis, taking a peep 
at it and another at her check ; “ it requires a microscope 
to find it. The next thing you will be walking through 
Baltimore on your bridal tour, followed by a mob of 
small boys, to see Meshach’s old steeple-top hat. Then 
I shall feel for you, Vesta.” 

The cruel blow struck home. Vesta’s reception, so 
unexpected, so acrimonious, affected her with a sense of 
gross ingratitude, and with a greater disappointment — 
she had failed to restore joy to her parents by her desper- 
ate sacrifice. 

She began to feel that she might have done wrong. 
The broad sight of her act, looking back upon it from 
this momentary revulsion, seemed a frightful flood, like 

15 


226 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


the mouth of one of the little Eastern Shore rivers that 
expands to a gulf in the progress of a brook. Last night 
she saw in an instant the misunderstandings and ruin 
she could prevent by her ready decision • now she saw 
the misunderstandings she never could correct, the prej- 
udices stronger than parental sympathy, the wide separa- 
tion her marriage had effected between two classes of her 
duty — to think with her husband’s affection and her moth- 
er’s interests at the same time. 

It also occurred to her that her father, the darling of 
her thought, had seemed slow to appreciate her marriage 
sacrifice, and was testy at her willingness to loosen her 
heart with her vestal zone towards her husband. 

The whole day had passed with such relief, such satis- 
faction, that she expected to end it in the tranquillity of 
Teackle Hall, like some young eagle returned to her nest 
with abundant prey for the old birds there, worn out with 
storm and time. In place of love and healing nature, 
Vesta had found worldliness, resentment, intrigue, and 
aspersion, concluding with a reference to the one object 
she feared and shrank from — the hat of dark entail, the 
shadow upon her future life. Her eyes filled up, she 
lisped aloud, 

“ I wish I had stayed with my husband 1” 

“ Has he become so necessary to you already ?” asked 
Mrs. Custis. 

“ He does appreciate my sacrifice,” Vesta said, and her 
low sobs filled the room. In a moment Virgie entered, 
alert to her playmate’s pains, and threw her arms around 
her mistress and kissed her like a child. 

•“ Oh, missy,” she spoke to Mrs. Custis, “ to make her 
cry after what she has done for all of us — to save your 
home, to save me from being sold !” 

No scruples of r8ce made Vesta reject this sympathy, 
precious to her parched breast despite the quadroon 
taint as the golden sand in the brooks of Africa, giving 


CASTE WITHOUT TONE. 


227 


at once wealth and cooling. The slave girl’s long white 
arms, scarcely less pale than ivory — for she had slipped 
in at the sign of sorrow, while making her simple toilet — 
drew Vesta into her lap and laid her head upon the fair 
maiden shoulder, as if it was a babe’s. On such a shoul- 
der, only a shadow darker, Vesta had often lain in in- 
fancy, and sucked the milk that was sweet as Eve’s — the 
common fount of white and black — at the breast of Vir- 
gie’s mother. That faithful nurse was gone ; the wild 
plum-tree grew upon her grave ; but Virgie inherited the 
motherly instinct and added the sisterly sympathy, and 
her rich hair, half unbound, streamed down on Vesta’s 
temples among the dark ringlets there, while she looked 
into her own spirit for a word to check those tears, and 
found it : 

“ People will say you have been crying, dear missy. 
The Lord knows you did right. Don’t let anybody make 
you lose your faith till your master, your husband, does 
wrong to you ; he wouldn’t like to have you cry.” 

There was a nervous chord somewhere in the slave’s 
throat that trembled on the key of the heroic, and her 
nostrils, slightly rounded, her head, free of carriage as the 
wild colt’s, and a light from her soft eyes that seemed to 
be reflected on their long, silken lashes, bore out a spirit 
tamed by servitude, which still could kindle to everything 
that concerned woman in her birthright. 

Vesta kissed Virgie, and ceased to sob ; she rose and 
kissed her mother also. 

“ It was very wrong in me to say what I did not wish 
to say, about Uncle Allan, mamma. I hope papa was 
kind to you to-day.” 

“ Dear me !” Mrs. Custis cried ; “ everything is turned 
upside down by that bog iron ore. A new element has 
come into the family to disturb it. Nobody believes any- 
thing respectable any more. Your father is an infidel, or 
a radical, or something perverse ; you are defending those 


228 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


wild foresters ! What will become of the Christian re- 
ligion and society and good principles ?” 

“ What did papa say before he left home?” 

“He acted in the strangest manner, Vesta. He came 
right in and kissed me, like a great booby, and sat down 
and wanted to talk about our courting days. I thought 
at first he was drunk again, or that the Methodists had 
got hold of him and fed him on camp-meeting straw. 
How do you account for it?” 

Virgie had slipped out as soon as the talk became con- 
fidential. 

“ He wants to do better, dear mamma. Do respond 
to his contrition and affection ! If we could all humble 
our hearts, it would be so easy to start life better, and 
turn this accident to joy and comfort. I have found new 
engagements and reliefs already. There is a young girl, 
Mr. Milburn’s niece, whom I shall bring home this even- 
ing and occupy myself teaching her. She is an orphan, 
without a mother’s knowledge, barely able to read, but 
pretty and quaint.” 

“ Bring a forester in here ?” Mrs. Custis exclaimed, fair- 
ly shivering. “ What will Allan McLane’s daughters say ? 
Your sister from Talbot has been here all this day, and 
you have scarcely given her an hour. Between this fatal 
marriage and your neglect, she left, with her husband, 
positively pale w r ith horror. I do not know what is to 
follow this marriage. I have posted a letter already to 
my brother Allan, telling him of your betrayal by your 
father and this bridegroom. All our connection will be 
up in arms.” 

Vesta’s heart sank again, but she felt no fears of her 
husband’s ability to meet mere family opposition, secured 
by law and form in his rights. She only feared hostility 
might rouse in him severity and defiance which would 
neutralize her present influence upon him, and change his 
accommodating, almost gentle, disposition as a husband. 


CASTE WITHOUT TONE. 229 

For, blacker than any object in her future path, she 
saw a little, trivial thing, like a wild boar closing her 
hitherto adventurous excursion into the forest where her 
husband grew — the hat that had covered his head ! 

Her mother’s thoughtless mention of that object made 
it formidable to her fears as some iron mask locked round 
her husband’s countenance, making day hideous and the 
world a'dungeon to all who must walk with him. 

She discerned that his combative spirit would start to 
the defence of his hat if it should become the subject of 
family rancor, because no man forgives an insult to his 
personal appearance ; and this article of wear had ringed 
his brain with gangrene, and war made upon it would be 
met by war, while Vesta had expected to induce forget- 
fulness of the rusty old tile, to charm away the remem- 
brance of it, and to have it laid forever aside. 

“ I am not the daughter of Uncle McLane,” Vesta pro- 
tested. “ I am, besides, a woman, free of my minority. 
Mr. Milburn is hardly the man to submit to any trespass. 
I warn you, mamma, to put my uncle at no disadvan- 
tage ; for my husband has already beaten papa, and he 
will smile at your brother when he knows that I do not 
support any of his pretensions.” 

“The first thing,” answered Mrs. Custis, stubbornly, 
“ is to see that he pays this check. Oh, my dear money !” 
— she pressed it to her heart — “ how delightful it is to see 
you again. Science, love, glory, ideas : how vulgar they 
are without money. With this check paid, I think I shall 
never read a book again ; and as for the bog ores, why, I 
shall scream if there is an iron article in the house. Ves- 
ta, this house, I believe, is yours now ? I had forgotten. 
Well, no wonder you defend the man who took your fa- 
ther’s roof from over his head and gave it to you !” 

“ That is unkind, mamma. I value it only as a sure 
home for you and papa. If I gave it to him it might be 
in risk again.” 


230 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Bui suppose you continue to defend this monster of a 
Milburn, he and you may require the whole house. I 
am too well-bred to be converted to any of his impious 
ideas. I am a Baltimorean, and stand by my colors.” 

“Let us speak of that no more,” Vesta said, almost in 
despair, “but talk of dear papa. I know he loves you.” 

“ It is too late,” Mrs. Custis remarked, solemnly, with 
another fondling of her check ; “ he has neglected me too 
long. I expect his attention and respect, and that he 
shall behave himself ; but no lovey and no honey for me 
now. Life has passed the noon and the early afternoon 
for him and me, and I live to be respectable, to appreci- 
ate my security, to keep upstarts at -arm’s-length, to enjoy 
my life in its appointed circle, taking care of my income, 
and never — no, never ! — giving any human being the op- 
portunity to make me a beggar again.” 

“Oh, mamma,” Vesta said, “think of Judge Custis! 
Have you not made home cold to him by this formalism ? 
We must study men, and please them according to their 
tastes, and therein lies our joy; else we are false to the 
companionship God gave us to man for. Yield to your 
husband’s boyish-heartedness ; fly with him, like the mate 
by the bird ! He has repented ; welcome him to your 
love again, and stay his feet from truant going, or he may 
dash down the precipice this sorrow has arrested him be- 
fore, of everlasting dissipation and the death of his noble 
soul !” 

Vesta stood above her mother, deeply moved, deeply 
earnest. Her mother stole ^another look at the bank 
check. 

“Well, daughter, I will be humbugged by him if you 
desire it,” she said, but with slight answering emotion. 
“ If I had my life to go over again I would marry a busi- 
ness man, and let the aristocracy go. There is the sec- 
ond knock at the front-door. I believe I will dress my- 
self and go down-stairs too.” 


CASTE WITHOUT TONE. 


231 


There were two ladies in the parlor when Vesta went 
there — Grandmother Tilghman and the Widow Den- 
nis. 

“ Good-evening, Vesta,” said the old lady, who was 
stone-blind, but easily knew Vesta’s footstep. “William 
thought you would not go to evening service on account 
of Mr. Milburn’s illness, so I came around to sit till 
church was over, when he will take me home. But what 
is that I hear in this parlor, like somebody sniffling?” 

“ It’s me, Aunt Vesty,” said the voice of Rhoda Hol- 
land from the background. 

“This is Mr. Milburn’s niece, who has come here to 
stay with me,” Ves.ta said. 

“ Ah ! then it is no Custis. The last sniffle I heard 
was at the ball to Lafayette in the spring of 1781. The 
marquis had marched from Head of Elk to the Bald Fri- 
ars’ ferry up the Susquehanna and inland among the hills 
to Baltimore, and we gave him a ball which, at his request, 
was turned into a clothing-party. He snuffed so much 
that he kept up a sniffle all the evening, like — ” 

Here Rhoda’s sniffle was heard again. 

“Yes, that’s a good imitation,” said Grandmother 
Tilghman, “but I don’t like it.” 

“ Did the gineral dance at the ball ?” asked Rhoda. 
“What did he do with his swurd? Did he dance with it 
outen his scibburd ?” * 

“ He danced like a gentleman,” Mrs. Tilghman re- 
plied, as if she would rather not, “ and led me out in the 
first set. You danced with him, Vesta, at the ball in ’24, 
forty-three years afterwards. Does he sniffle yet?” 

“ I don’t recollect, grand-aunt. I was a little girl, and 
so much flattered that I thought everything he did was 
perfect.” 

“ Ah me !” exclaimed Mrs. Tilghman, pulling the feather 
of her turban up, and looking as much like an old belle 
as possible at eighty years of age ; “ you danced before 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


23 * 

Lafayette with my grandson Bill. Bill hardly remembers 
Lafayette at all, thinking of you that night, so wonderful 
in your girl’s charms. I told him Vesta would never 
marry him, as he was too plain and poor. But I never 
thought you would marry that — ” 

Here Rhoda sniffled warningly. 

“Yes,” exclaimed the old lady, catching the sniffle ; “ I 
never thought you would marry that ! But Bill is as dear 
a fool as ever. He says now that Meshach Milburn is a 
good man, too. I never thought he was above a — ” 

Rhoda sniffled earnestly. 

“Precisely that,” exclaimed the old lady; “that was 
my estimate of the stock. Bill says he is a financial gen- 
ius. I don’t see what is to become of girls in this gen- 
eration. Here is Ellenora, too good to marry Phoebus, 
the sailor man, too poor to marry anybody else ; now, if 
Milburn had married her and taken her son Levin into 
his business, it would have been reasonable ; but to take 
you and pervert your happiness, almost makes me — ” 

Sniffle from Rhoda. 

“ Yes,” said the old lady, snappishly ; “ almost ! But 
I never did do it yet.” 

“ Did you ever see Gineral Washin’ton, mem ?” Rhoda 
asked. “ I thought, maybe, you was old enough. Misc 
Somers, she see him up yer to Kint River a-crossin’ to 
’Napolis. He was a-swarin’ at the cappen of the piriau- 
ger and a dammin’ of the Eas’n Shu, and he said they 
wan’t no good rudes in Marylan’ nohow ; that the Wes’n 
Shu was all red mud, an’ the Eas’n Shu yaller mud, an’ 
the bay was jus’ pizen. Misc Somers say she don’t think 
it was Gineral Washin’ton, caze he cuss so. She goin’ 
to find out when she kin git a book an’ somebody to read 
outen it to her, caze she dreffle smart.” 

“Grand-aunt Tilghman,” Vesta interposed to the blank 
silence of the room, “knew General Washington inti- 
mately.” 


CASTE WITHOUT TONE. 233 

“ Do tell us !” cried Rhoda. “ You kin be a right in- 
terestin’ ole woman, I reckon, ef you air so quar.” 

In the midst of a smile, in which the blind old lady 
herself joined, and Mrs. Custis at the same time entered 
the room, Mrs. Tilghman spoke as follows : 

“I went to visit Cousin Martha Washington several 
years before the Revolution, at Mount Vernon. I had 
seen her while she was the widow of Cousin Custis, and 
we occasionally corresponded. In those days we visited 
by vessel, so a schooner of Robert Morris’s father set me 
ashore at Mount Vernon. Colonel Washington was then 
having his first portrait painted by Wilson Peale, and he 
was forty years old. Peale and Washington used to pitch 
the bar, play quoits, and fox-hunt, while Cousin Martha, 
who was only three months younger than the colonel, 
knitted and cut out sewing for her colored girls, and 
heard her daughter, Martha Custis, play the harpsichord. 
Poor Martha had the consumption ; she was dark as an 
Indian ; Washington often carried her along the piazza 
and into the beautiful woodlands near the house ; but she 
died, leaving him all her money — nearly twenty thousand 
dollars. We Custises rather looked down on Colonel 
Washington in those days ; he was not of the old gentry ; 
his poor mother could barely read and write, and once, 
when we went to Fredericksburg to see her, she was rid- 
ing out in the field among her few negroes as her own 
overseer, wearing an old sun-bonnet, and sunburned like a 
forester.” 

“Dear me !” exclaimed Mrs. Custis. “I should think 
she was a great impediment to Washington.” 

“I reckon that’s the way her son got big,” exclaimed 
Rhoda ; “ if his mar had laid down in bed all day, he 
couldn’t have killed King George so easy with his 
swurd.” 

“ I often said to Cousin Martha, ‘ What did you see in 
this big horse of a man?’ ‘ Oh,’ she replied, ‘he’s the 


234 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


best overseer in Virginia. He looks after my property 
as no other man could.’ ” 

“Then,” said Mrs. Custis, emphatically, “he was one 
man out of a thousand.” 

“ That’s the kind of man you married, Vesta,” spoke 
up Mrs. Dennis. 

“ Her husband,” said Mrs. Custis, “ looked after her fa- 
ther’s property, I am sure, for he got it all.” 

“ And returned it all,” exclaimed Vesta. 

Mrs. Custis remarked that Washington certainly was a 
blue-blooded man. 

“ Is thar people with blue blood cornin’ outen of ’em ?” 
asked Rhoda Holland. “ Lord sakes ! I should think it 
would make ’em cold.” 

“ I wonder if men are ever great ?” asked Vesta ; “ or 
whether it is not great occasion and trial that project 
them. A crisis comes in our lives, and, finding what we 
can endure, we incur greater risks, and finally delight in 
such adventure.” 

“That is the way with my poor boy, Levin,” said Mrs. 
Dennis, quietly, to Vesta. She was a pretty woman, some- 
what past thirty, with rosy cheeks, blue eyes, neat but 
rather poor attire, and a simple, artless manner, and 
might have passed for the sister of her son. 

“Is Levin coming for you to-night?” Vesta asked. 

“No,” blushed the widow; “James Phoebus will see 
me home. Levin has gone off in his boat, and I have 
been worried about him all day. Some time, I am afraid, 
he will go and never return. Oh, Cousin Vesta, this wait- 
ing for a husband neither alive nor dead is very trying.” 

Overhearing the remark, Mrs. Custis remarked, “ No- 
rah, you ought to be ashamed to keep that faithful fellow 
waiting on you, when you could give yourself a good hus- 
band and reward him so easily.” 

“I think you had better look out for old age,” Mrs. 
Tilghman also said, “while you have youth and good 


CASTE WITHOUT TONE. 235 

looks to obtain the provision. -Oden Dennis is probably 
dead ; if not dead, he does not mean to return, for I can 
think of no circumstances in this age which would for- 
cibly detain a man from his wife fifteen years. Even if 
he was in a prison, he would be allowed to write to you. 
He may not be dead, Norah, but he is not coming back. 
Get a father for your son ; you cannot manage Levin.” 

“ Maybe he has been stoled by Injins,” exclaimed 
Rhoda, with great fervor; “thar was a Injin captive in a 
shew at Nu-ark, that had been kept nineteen years. He 
forgot his language, and whooped dreffle. Misc Somers 
say he was an imploster, an’ worked on the Brekwater up 
to Lewistown. She’s always lookin’ behind the shew to 
find out somethin’.” (Slight sniffle.) 

“ Do get that girl a pocket-handkerchief, and show her 
how to use it,” exclaimed Mrs. Tilghman, breaking out. 
“ Ah ! girls, I have been a widow thirty years. I never 
gave up the expectation of marrying again till I lost my 
eyesight ; and even after that, at sixty-five, I had an offer 
of marriage ; but I said to my gallant old beau, ‘ I will not 
take a man I cannot compliment by seeing him and ad- 
miring him every day. I love you, but my blindness 
would give you too much pain.’ In our quiet towns, all 
the life worth living is domestic joy. Do not lose it, El- 
lenora ; do not put it off too long !” 

“ I could love Mr. Phoebus, plain as he is,” the widow 
spoke, “ if I could persuade myself that Oden is dead. 
But that I cannot do. A real person — spirit or man — is 
watching over me closely. My very shoes I wear to- 
night came from that mysterious agent. It is not my 
son ; it is not James Phoebus. No other stranger would 
so secretly assist me. I am bound up in the fear and 
wonder that it is my husband.” 

“ That does beat conjecture,” said old Mrs. Tilghman. 
“ Have you no friend you might suspect?” 

“None,” the widow answered. “None who have not 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


236 

worn out their means of giving long ago. Can I marry, 
with this ghostly visitation coming so regularly? Should 
I not have faith in a husband’s living if I receive a wife’s 
care from an unseen hand?” 

“ Oden Dennis,” Mrs. Custis remarked, “ was hardly a 
man to do charity and not be seen. He was rather self- 
indulgent, demonstrative, and restless. I cannot think 
of his nocturnal visits in the body. Besides, he would 
not supply you in that way, Norah, if he meant to come 
back; and if he cannot himself come to you, neither 
could he send.” 

Not altogether relishing Mrs. Tilghman’s reproof, Rho- 
da was again heard from, saying : 

“ Lord sakes ! all the women has to talk about when 
they is gone is the men. When the men comes, they 
talks as if they never missed of ’em. Misc Somers, she 
never had no man, an’ she talks mos’ about the women 
that has got one. I think Aunt Vesty has got the best 
man in Prencess Anne. He’s the richest. He’s the 
freest. He never courted no other gal. He ain’t got no 
quar old women runnin’ of him down — caze Misc Somers 
is dreffle afraid of him !” This last remark seemed apol- 
ogetic and an after-thought. 

“ I am beginning to think my fortune is better than I 
deserve,” Vesta replied, to soften the application, as wine, 
tea, and cake were brought in. “ Now, dear friends, as I 
am Mr. Milburn’s wife, let us all be Christians this Sun- 
day night, and drink his health and happy recovery, and 
that he may never repent his marriage.” 

They drank with some hesitation, except the bride, 
Rhoda, and Mrs. Dennis. Mrs. Tilghman needed the 
wine too much to wait long, and Mrs. Custis, finding she 
was observed, took a sip from her glass also, excusing 
herself on the ground of a recent headache from drinking 
heartily. 

As the conversation proceeded, now by general partic* 


CASTE WITHOUT TONE. 


237 


ipation, again by couples apart, and Vesta found herself 
more and more a subject of sympathy, with no little curi- 
osity interwoven in it, she also imagined that an under- 
tone of belief was abroad that she had made a mercenary 
marriage. 

Old Mrs. Tilghman — in her prime a most caustic belle, 
and worldly as three marriages, all shrewdly contracted, 
could make her — seemed determined to hold that Vesta 
had rejected her grandson for the money-lender on the 
consideration of wealth. Vesta’s own mother, too, who 
should have known her well, had twice hinted the same. 
Even the inoffensive Ellenora had accepted that idea, or 
another kin to it, and Rhoda Holland had remembered 
that her uncle was the richest of bridegrooms in Princess 
Anne. Vesta felt the injustice, but said to herself : 

“ I must make the sacrifice complete, and incur any 
harsh judgment it may bear. I see that I shall be driven 
for sympathy to the last place in the world I anticipated : 
to my husband’s heart. Yes, there is something besides 
love in marriage : if I cannot love him, he can under- 
stand me.” 

Vesta had come to a place all come to who volunteer 
an act of great sacrifice — to have it put upon a low mo- 
tive from the lower plane of sacrifice in many otherwise 
kind people. We give our money to an institution of 
charity, and it is said that it was for notoriety, or self- 
seeking, or at the expense of our kin. We lead a forlorn 
hope in politics, or some other arena, to establish a cause 
or assist a principle, with the certain result of defeat, and 
we are said to be jealous or malignant. Perhaps we 
make a book to illustrate some old region off the high- 
ways of observation, drawn to it by kindred strings or 
early patterings, and the politician there regards it as 
an attack, the old family fossil as an intrusion, the very 
youth as if it were a queer and gratuitous thing from 
such an outer source. So we wince a little, but feel that 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


238 

it was necessary to be misunderstood to complete the 
sacrifice. 

The feeling of despondency increased after the little 
company separated, and Vesta went to her room and laid 
herself upon her still maiden bed. She had said her 
prayer and asked the approval of God, but her nervous 
system, under the tension of almost two days’ excitement 
and events such as she had never known, was alert and 
could not fall to slumber. Old passages of Testament 
lore haunted her soul, such as : “ Thy desire shall be to 
thy husband, and he shall rule over thee “ A man shall 
leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his 
wife.” She began to see that marriage was not merely 
the solution of a family trouble, and the giving of her 
body as a hostage for a pecuniary debt, but that it was a 
rendition of all her liberty, even the liberty of sympathy 
and of sorrow, to the man to whom she must cleave. 

In marrying him she had left friendship, father and 
mother, everything, at a greater distance than she ever 
dreamed ; and they resented the desertion to the degree 
that they now confounded her with her new interest, let 
go their claim upon her, and could scarce conceive of her 
except in the dual relation of a woman subject to her 
husband, and selfish as himself. 

“I wonder if he will grow weary of me, too,” she 
thought, with anguish, “ after his possession is established 
and I shall have no other source of confidence? What 
did I know of this world only yesterday ? Then every 
way seemed clear and open for me, my friends abundant, 
and love profuse ; to-day I am in awful doubts, and yet 
I must not lose my will and drift with every passing fear 
and confusion into the fickleness which makes woman 
contemptible after she has given her hand. I will never 
give up two persons— my father, and my husband !” 

As she turned down the lamp, it being nearly midnight, 
a short, fierce cry, quickly stifled, as if some wild animal 


LONG SEPARATIONS. 


239 


had howled once in nightmare and fallen asleep in his 
kennel again, seized on her ears and chilled her blood. 

Vesta started up in bed and listened. It seemed to 
her that there were footsteps, but they passed away, and 
she listened in vain for any other sounds, till sleep fell 
deep and dreamless upon her, like black Lethe winding 
through a desert wedding-day. 


Chapter XXI. 

LONG SEPARATIONS. 

Vesta was awakened by Roxy, Virgie, and her mother 
all standing around her bed at once, exclaiming some- 
thing unintelligible together. It was late morning, .the 
whole family having slept long, after the several experi- 
ences of two such days, and the sun was shining through 
the great trees before Teackle Hall and burnishing the 
windows, so that Vesta could hardly see. 

“The kitchen servants have run away,” Mrs. Custis 
shrieked, on Vesta’s request that her mother only should 
talk. “ Old Hominy is gone, and has taken all her herbs 
and witcheries with her ; and all the young children bred 
in the kitchen, Ned and Vince, the boys, and little Phil- 
lis, the baby, they, too, are gone.” 

“ I heard a strange cry or howl last night, as I dropped 
to sleep,” Vesta exclaimed, rubbing her eyes. 

“ Dear missy,” cried Virgie, falling upon the pillow, 
“it was your poor dog Turk; his throat has been cut 
upon the lawn.” 

“ Yes, missy,” Roxy blubbered, “poor Turk lies in his 
blood. There is nobody to get breakfast but Virgie and 
me. Indeed, we did not know about it.” 

“ That is not very likely,” said the suspicious Mrs. 
Custis. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


24 'o 

“ I know you did not, girls,” Vesta said, “you have too 
tnuch intelligence and principle, I am sure; nor could 
Hominy have been so inhuman to my poor dog.” 

Vesta at once rose up and threw on her morning- 
gown. 

“ The first thing to be done is to have breakfast. 
Roxy, do you go at once to Mr. Milburn’s and bring his 
man Samson here, and awake Miss Holland to take Sam- 
son’s place by her uncle. Tell Samson to make the fire-, 
and you and he get the breakfast. No person is to speak 
of this incident of the kitchen servants leaving us on any 
pretence.” 

“Won’t you give the alarm the first thing?” cried Mrs. 
Custis, not very well pleased to see Vesta keep her tem- 
per. “ They may be overtaken before they get far away, 
daughter. Those four negroes are worth twelve hundred 
dollars !” 

“ They are not worth one dollar, mamma, if they have 
run away from us ; because I should never either sell 
them or keep them again if they had behaved so treach- 
erously.” 

“I say, sell them and get the money,” Mrs. Custis 
cried ; “ are they not ours ?” 

“ No, mamma, they are mine. Mr. Milburn and papa 
are to be consulted before any steps are taken. Papa 
deeded them to me only last Saturday ; why should they 
have deserted at the moment I had redeemed them ? 
Virgie, can you guess ?” 

Virgie hesitated, only a moment. 

“ Miss Vesty, I think I can see what made Hominy go. 
She was afraid of Meshach Milburn and his queer hat. 
She believed the devil give it to him. She thought he 
had bought her by marrying you, and was going to christen 
her to the Bad Man, or do something dreadful with her 
and the little children.” 

“That’s it, Miss Vessy,” plump little Roxy added. 


LONG SEPARATIONS. 


241 


“ Hominy loved the little children dearly ; she thought 
they was to become Meshach’s, and she must save 
them.” 

“ Poor, superstitious creature !” Vesta exclaimed. 

“ More misery brought about by that foors hat !” cried 
Mrs. Custis. “ If I ever lay hands on it, it shall end in 
the fire.” 

“ No wonder,” Vesta said, “ that this poor, ignorant 
woman should do herself such an injury on account of 
an article of dress that disturbs liberal and enlightened 
minds ! Now I recollect that Hominy said something 
about having ‘ got Quaker.’ What did it mean ?” 

The two slave girls looked at each other significantly, 
and Virgie answered, 

“ Don’t the Quakers help slaves to get off to a free 
state? Maybe she meant that.” 

“ Do you suppose the abolitionists would tamper with 
a poor old woman like that, whose liberty would neither 
be a credit to them nor a comfort to her? I cannot 
think so meanly of them,” Vesta reflected. “Besides, 
could she have killed my dog ?” 

“A gross, ignorant, fetich-worshipping negro would 
kill a dog, or a child, or anything, when she is possessed 
with a devil,” Mrs. Custis insisted. 

“ I don’t believe she killed Turk,” Roxy remarked, as 
she left the room. “There was a white man in the 
kitchen last Saturday night : I think he slept there ; mas- 
ter gave him leave.” 

“ Yes, missy,” Virgie continued, after Roxy had gone 
to obey her orders ; “he was a dreadful man, and looked 
at me so coarse and familiar that I have dreamed of him 
since. It was the man Mr. Milburn knocked down for 
mashing his hat ; he was afraid Mr. Milburn would throw 
him into jail, so he asked master to hide in the kitchen. 
But Hominy was almost crazy with fear of Mr. Milburn 
before that.” 

16 


242 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


Vesta held up her beautiful arms with a look of de< 
spair. 

“ What has not that poor old hat brought upon every 
body ?” she cried. “ Oh, who dares contest the sunshine 
with the tailor and hatter? They are the despots that 
never will abdicate or die.” 

“ The idea of your father letting a tramp like that 
sleep in the kitchen among the slaves !” cried Mrs. Cus- 
tis. “What obligation had he incurred there, too, I 
should like to know ? Teackle Hall is become a cave of 
owls and foxes ; it is time for me to leave it. Here is 
my husband gone, riding fifty miles for his worst enemy, 
leaving us without a cook and without a man’s assistance 
to discover where ours is gone. I know what I shall do : 
I will start this day for Cambridge, to meet my brother, 
and visit the Goldsboroughs there till some order is 
brought out of this attempt to plant wheat and tares to- 
gether.” 

Vesta stopped a moment and kissed her mother : 
“ That is just the thing, dear mother,” she said. “ Let 
me straighten out the difficulties here ; go, and come back 
when all is done, and you can be yourself again.” 

“ I shall do it, Vesta. Brother Allan gets to Cambridge 
to-morrow afternoon ; I will go as far as Salisbury this 
day, and either meet him on the road to-morrow or find 
him at Cambridge. Oh, what a house is Teackle Hall 
— full of male and female foresters, abolitionists, runa- 
ways, and radicals ! All made crazy by the bog ores and 
the fool’s hat !” 

Descending to the yard, Vesta found Turk lying in his 
blood, his mastiff jaws and shaggy sides clotted red, and, 
as it seemed, the howl in which he died still lingering in 
the air. The Virginia spirit rose in Vesta’s eyes : 

“ Whoever killed this dog only wanted the courage to 
kill men !” she exclaimed. “ James Phoebus, look here !” 

The pungy captain had been abroad for hours, and the 


LONG SEPARATIONS. 


243 


masts of his vessel were just visible across the marshy 
neck in the rear of Teackle Hall. He touched his hat 
and came in. 

“ Early morning Miss Vesty ! Hallo ! Turk dead ? By 
smoke, yer’s pangymonum !” 

“ He’s stabbed, Jimmy !” Samson Hat remarked, com- 
ing out of the kitchen ; “ see whar de dagger struck him 
right over de heart ! Dat made him howl and fall dead. 
His froat was not cut dat sudden ; it’s gashed as if wid 
somethin’ blunt.” 

" Right you are, nigger! The throat - cuttin’ was a 
make believe ; the stab will tell the tale. But who’s this 
yer, lurkin’ aroun’ the kitchen do’; if it ain’t Jack Won- 
nell, I hope I may die ! Sic!” 

With this, active as the dog had been but yesterday, 
Jimmy rushed on Jack Wonnell, chased him to the fence, 
and brought him back by the neck. Wonnell wore a 
bell-crown, and his hand was full of fall blossoms. As 
Wonnell observed the dead dog, pretty little Roxy came 
out of the kitchen, and stood blushing, yet frightened, 
to see him. 

“What yo’ doin’ with them rosy-posies ?” Jimmy de- 
manded. “ Who’re they fur ? What air you sneakin’ 
aroun’ Teackle Hall fur so bright of a mornin’, lazy as I 
know you is, Jack Wonnell ?” 

“They are flowers he brings every morning for me,” 
Roxy spoke up, coming forward with a pretty simper. 

“ For you ?” exclaimed Vesta. “ You are not receiving 
the attentions of white men, Roxy ?” 

“ He offered, himself, to get flowers for me, so I might 
give you as pretty ones as Virgie, missy. I let him bring 
them. He’s a poor, kind man.” 

“I jess got ’em, Jimmy,” interjected Jack Wonnell, with 
his peculiar wink and leer, “ caze Roxy’s the belle of 
Prencess Anne, and I’m the bell-crown. She’s my little 
queen, and I ain’t ashamed of her.” 


2 44 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“Courtin’ niggers, air you !” Jimmy exclaimed, collar- 
ing Jack again. “ Now whar did you go all day Sunday 
with Levin Dennis and the nigger buyer ? What hokey- 
pokey wair you up to ?” 

“ Mr. Wonnell,” Roxy had the presence of mind to 
say, “ take care you tell the truth, for my sake ! Aunt 
Hominy is gone, with all the kitchen children, and Mr. 
Phoebus suspects you !” 

“ Great lightnin’ bugs !” Jimmy Phoebus cried. “ The 
niggers stole, an’ the dog dead, too?” 

“ I ’spect Jedge Custis sold ’em, Jimmy,” Jack Wonnell 
pleaded, twisting out of the bay captain’s hands. “ He’s 
gwyn to be sold out by Meshach Milburn. Maybe he 
jess sold ’em and skipped.” 

“Where is Judge Custis, Miss Vesty?” Phoebus asked. 

“ He has gone to Delaware, to be absent several days.” 

“ Is what this bell-crowned fool says, true, Miss Vesty ?” 

“No. There was some fear among the kitchen ser- 
vants of being sold ; there was no such necessity when 
they ran away, as it had been settled.” 

“ It is unfortunate that your father is gone. He has 
been seen with a negro trader. That trader and he dis- 
appear the same evening. The trader lives about Dela- 
ware, too, Miss Vesty.” 

Vesta’s countenance fell, as she thought of the suspi- 
cion that might attach to her father. The great old trees 
around Teackle Hall seemed moaning together in the 
air, as if to say, “ Ancestors, this is strange to hear !” 

“Who told you, Jack Wonnell,” spoke the bay sailor, 
“that Judge Custis was to be sold out?” 

“ I won’t tell you, Jimmy.” 

“ I told him,” Roxy cried, after an instant’s hesitation, 
while Jimmy Phoebus was grinding the stiff bell-crown 
hat down on Wonnell’s suffocating muzzle. “ I did think 
we was all going to be sold, and had nobody to pity me 
but that poor white man, and I told him as a friend.” 


LONG SEPARATIONS. 


245 


“And I never told anybody in the world but Levin 
Dennis yisterday,” Jack cried out, when he was able to 
get his breath. 

“ Whar did you go, Jack, wid the long man and Levin 
all day yisterday ?” Samson asked. 

“ Yes, whar was you ?” Jimmy Phoebus shouted, with 
one of his Greek paroxysms of temper on, as his dark 
skin and black-cherry eyes flamed volcanic. “Whar did 
you leave Ellenora’s boy and that infernal soul-buyer ? 
Speak, or I’ll throttle you like this dog !” 

“ You let him alone, sir !” little Roxy cried, hotly, “ he 
won’t deceive anybody ; he’s going to tell all he knows.” 

“Let go, Jimmy,” Samson said ; “don’t you see Miss 
Vesty heah ?” 

“Don’t scare the man, Mr. Phoebus,” Vesta added; 
“ but I command him to tell all that he knows, or papa 
shall commit him to jail.” 

Jack Wonnell, taking his place some steps away from 
Phoebus, and wiping his eyes on his sleeve, whimpering 
a few minutes, to Roxy’s great agitation, finally told his 
tale. 

“ I’m sorry, Jimmy, you accused me before this beau- 
tiful lady an’ my purty leetle Roxy — bless her soul ! — of 
stealing Jedge Custis’s niggers. Thair’s on’y one I ever 
looked sheep’s eyes at, an’ she’s a-standin’ here, listenin’ 
to every true word I says. I’m pore trash, an’ I reckon 
the jail’s as good as the pore-house for me, ef they want 
to send me thair, fur it’s in town, and Roxy kin come an’ 
look through the bars at me every day.” 

Roxy was so much affected that she threw her apron 
up to her face, and Vesta and Phoebus had to smile, 
while Samson Hat, looking indulgently on, exclaimed, 

“ Dar’s love all froo de woods. Doves an’ crows can’t 
help it. It’s deeper down dan fedders an’ claws.” 

“That nigger trader,” continued Jack Wonnell, bell- 
crown in hand, “hired me an’ Levin to take him a tar- 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


246 

rapinin’. He had a bag of gold that big” — measuring 
with his hand in the crown of the hat — “an’ he give 
Levin some of it, an’ I took it to Levin’s mother las’ night, 
an’ told her Levin wouldn’t be back fur a week, maybe. 
I thought Mr. Johnson was gwyn to give me some gold 
too, so I could buy Roxy, but yer’s all he give me. 
Everybody disappints me, Jimmy !” 

Jack Wonnell showed an old silver fi’penny bit, and 
his countenance was so lugubrious that the sailor ex- 
claimed, 

“Jack, he paid you too well for all the sense you got. 
Now,whar has Levin gone with the FJlenora Dewiis V } 

“ I don’t know, Jimmy. He made Levin sail her up to 
the landin’ down yer below town, whair Levin’s father, 
Cap’n Dennis, launched the Idy fifteen year ago. I left 
Levin thar, and he said, ‘Jack, I’m goin’ off with the nig- 
ger trader to git some of his money fur mother !’ ” 

“ Poor miserable boy !” Phoebus exclaimed ; “ he’s led 
off easy as his pore daddy. The man he’s gone with, 
Miss Vesty, is black as hell. Joe Johnson is known to 
every thief on the bay, every gypsy on the shore. He 
steals free niggers when he can’t buy slave ones, outen 
Delaware state. He sometimes runs away Maryland 
slaves to oblige their hypocritical masters that can’t sell 
’em publicly, an’ Johnson and the bereaved owner di- 
vides the price. Go in the house, yaller gal 1” Jimmy 
Phoebus turned to Roxy, who obeyed instantly. “Jack 
Wonnell, you go too ; I’m done with you !” (Jack slipped 
around the house and made his peace with Roxy before 
he started.) “ You needn’t to go, Samson * I know you’re 
true as steel !” 

“I must go an’ git de breakfast, Jimmy,” the negro 
said, going in. 

“ Now, Miss Vesty ” — Phoebus turned to the mistress 
of Teackle Hall — “Joe Johnson has got old Hominy and 
the little niggers, by smoke ! That part of this hokey 


LONG SEPARATIONS. 


247 


pokey is purty sure ! Did he steal them an’ decoy them, 
or wair they sold to him by Judge Custis or by Meshach 
Milburn ?” 

“ By neither, I will risk my life. Mr. Milburn was 
taken to his bed Saturday evening, and on Sunday fa- 
ther went to Delaware on legal business for my hus- 
band.” 

“ That is Meshach Milburn, I hear,” the bay sailor re- 
marked, with a penetrating look. “ Shall I go and see 
him on this nigger business ?” 

“ No,” Vesta replied ; “ he is too sick, and it is a deli- 
cate subject to name to him. My girls, Virgie and Roxy, 
think old Hominy ran away from a superstitious fear 
she had of Mr. Milburn, who had become the master of 
Teackle Hall by marriage.” 

“Yes, by smoke ! every nigger in town, big and little, 
is afraid of Milburn’s hat.” 

“ He has no ownership in those servants, nor has my 
father now. I will tell you, James — relying on your pru- 
dence — that Hominy belonged to me, and so did those 
three children, having passed from my father to my hus- 
band and thence to me and back to my father, and from 
him to me again in the very hour of my marriage. I fear 
they have been persuaded away, to be abused and sold 
out of Maryland.” 

Jimmy Phoebus looked up at the sighing trees and 
over the wide facade of Teackle Hall, and exclaimed 
“ by smoke !” several times before he made his conclu- 
sions. 

“Miss Vesty,” he said, finally, “send for your father to 
come home immediately. People will not understand^ 
how Joe Johnson, outlaw as he is, dared to rob a Mary- 
land judge of his house servants, Johnson himself bein’ 
a Marylander, unless they had some understanding. Your 
sudden marriage, an’ your pappy’s embarrassments, will 
be put together, by smoke ! an’ thar is some blunt enough 


248 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


to say that when Jedge Custis is hard up, he’ll git money 
anyhow !” 

The charge, made with an honest man’s want of skill, 
battered down all explanations. 

“ I confess it,” said Vesta. “ Papa’s going’away on a 
Sunday, and these people disappearing on Sunday night, 
might excite idle comment. It might be said that he en- 
deavored to sell some of his property before his creditor 
could seize it.” 

“ I have seen you about yer since you was a baby, 
Vesty, an’ Ellenora says you’re better game an’ heart than 
these ’ristocrats, fur who I never keered ! That’s why 
I take the liberty of calling you Vesty. Now, let me tell 
you about your niggers. If they was a-gwyn to freedom 
in a white man’s keer, I wouldn’t stop ’em to be cap’n of 
a man-of-war. But Joe Johnson, supposin’ that he’s got 
of ’em, is a demon. Do you see the stab on that dog? 
well, it’s done with one of the bagnet pistols them kid- 
nappers carries — hoss pistols, with a spring dagger on the 
muzzle ; and, when they come to close quarters, they stab 
with ’em. Johnson killed your dog; I know his marks. 
He sails this whole bay, and maybe he’s run them nig- 
gers to Washin’ton, or to Norfolk, an’ sold ’em south. It 
ain’ no use to foller him to either of them places, if he 
has, with the wind an’ start he’s got, and your pappy’s in- 
fluence lost to us by his absence. But thar is one chance 
to overhaul the thief.” 

“ What is that, James?” said Vesta, earnestly. “ I do 
want to save those poor people from the abuse of a man 
who could kill my poor, fond dog.” 

“Joe Johnson keeps a hell-trap — a reg’lar Pangymo- 
num, up near the head of Nanticoke River. It’s the 
headquarters of his band, and a black band they air. 
He has had good wind ” — the pungy captain looked up 
and noted the breeze — “ to get him out of Manokin last 
night, and into the Sound; but he must beat up the Nar^ 


LONG SEPARATIONS. 


249 


ticoke all day, and we kin head him off by land, if that’s 
his destination, before he gits to Vienna, an’ make him 
show his cargo. Then, with a messenger to follow Jedge 
Custis an’ turn him back, we can swear these niggers on 
Johnson — and, you see, we can’t make no such oath till 
we git the evidence — an’ then, by smoke ! we’ll bring ole 
Hominy an’ the pore chillen back to Teackle Hall.” 

“ Here is one you love to serve, James,” said Vesta, as 
the Widow Dennis came in the gate. 

“I came to meet you at the landing, James,” said the 
blue-eyed, sweet-voiced widow, with the timid step and 
ready blush. “Levin is gone for a week with a negro 
trader ; he sends me so much money, I fear he is under 
an unusual temptation, and Wonnell says the trader is 
giving him liquor. What shall I do ?” 

“ Make me his father, Ellenory, and that’ll give me an 
interest over him, and you will command me. You want 
a first mate in your crew. Levin kin make a fool of me 
if I go chase him now, and I can’t measure money with 
a nigger trader, by smoke !” 

“Oh ! James,” the widow spoke, “you know my heart 
would be yours if I could control it. When my way is 
clear you will have but to ask. Do go and find Levin !” 

“ Norah, we suspect the same trader of having taken 
off Hominy, our cook, and the kitchen children, in Levin’s 
boat.” 

The widow listened to Vesta, and burst into tears. 
“ He will be accessory to the crime,” she sobbed. “ Oh, 
this is what I have ever feared. James Phoebus, you 
have always had the best influence over Levin. If you 
love me, arrest him before the law takes cognizance of 
this wild deed. Where has he gone ?” 

Virgie appeared upon the lawn to say that Mrs. Custis 
wanted to know who should drive her as far as Salisbury, 
where she could get a slave of her son-in-law to continue 
on with her to Cambridge. 


250 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


"I have been thinking all the morning where I can 
find a reliable man to go and bring back papa,” Vesta 
answered; “there are a few slaves at the Furnace, but 
time is precious.” 

“ Here is Samson,” Virgie said, “ and he has got a mule 
he rides all over the county. Let him go.” 

“ Go whar, my love ?” asked Samson. 

“To Dover, in Delaware,” Vesta answered. “You 
can ride to Laurel by dark, Samson, and get to Dover to- 
morrow afternoon.” 

“And I can ride with him as far as Salisbury,” Jimmy 
Phoebus said, “and get out to the Nanticoke some way; 
fur I see Ellenora will cry till I go.” 

“ You can do better than that, James,” Vesta said, rap- 
idly thinking. “Samson can take you to Spring Hill 
Church or Barren Creek Springs, by a little deviation, 
and at the Springs you will be only three miles from the 
Nanticoke. Even mamma might go on with the carriage 
to-night as far as the Springs, or to Vienna.” 

“ If two of them are going,” Virgie exclaimed, “ one can 
drive Missy Custis and the other ride the mule.” 

Samson shook his head. 

“ Dey say a free nigger man gits Cotched up in dat ar 
Delawaw state. Merrylin’s good enough fur me. I likes 
de Merrylin light gals de best,” looking at Virgie. 

“Go now, Samson, to oblige Miss Vesty,” Virgie said, 
“ and I’ll try to love you a little, black and bad as you are.” 

“ I’se afraid of Delawaw state,” Samson repeated, 
laughing slowly. “Joe Johnson, dat I put dat head on, 
will git me whar he lives if I go dar, mebbe.” 

“No,” Phoebus put in, “I’ll be a lookin’ after him on 
the banks of the Nanticoke, Samson, while you keep right 
in the high-road from Laurel to Georgetown, and on to 
Dover. Joe Johnson’s been whipped at the post, and 
banished from Delaware for life, and dussn’t go thar no 
more.” 


LONG SEPARATIONS. 


25 1 


“ If you go, Samson,” little Roxy put in, having re- 
appeared, “ Virgie’ll feel complimented. Anything that 
obliges Miss Vesty counts with Virgie.” 

“ If you are a free man,” Virgie herself exclaimed, her 
slight, nervous, willowy figure expanding, “ are you afraid 
to go into a freer state than Maryland ? If I was free I 
would want to go to the freest state of all. Behave like 
a free man, Samson Hat, or what is freedom worth to 
you ?” 

“ It’s wuth so much, pretty gal, dat I don’t want to be 
a-losin’ of it, mind, I tell you, ’sept to my wife when she’ll 
hab me.” 

Samson watched the quadroon’s delicate, high-bred 
features, her skin almost paler than her young mistress’s, 
her figure like the dove’s after a hard winter — the more 
active that a little meagre — her head small, and its tresses 
soft as the crow blackbird’s plumage, and the loyalty that 
lay in her large eyes, like strong passion, for her mistress, 
was turned to pride, and nearly scorn, when they listened 
to him. 

“ A slave, Miss Vesty says ” — Virgie spoke with almost 
fierceness — “is not one that’s owned, half as much as one 
that sells himself — to hard drink, or to selfishness, or to fear. 
You’re not a free man, Samson, if you’re afraid, and are 
like these low slave negroes who dare nothing if they can 
only get a little low pleasure. All that can make a black 
man white, in my eyes, is a white man’s enterprise.” 

Vesta felt, as she often had done, the capable soul of 
her servant, and did not resent her spirit as unbecoming 
a slave, but rather felt responsive chords in her own nat- 
ure, as if, indeed, Virgie was the more imperious of the 
two. Coming now into full womanhood, her race ele- 
ments finding their composition, her character unre- 
strained by any one in Teackle Hall, Virgie was her 
young mistress’s shield-bearer, like David to the princely 
Jonathan. 


252 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“Why, Virgie,” Samson answered, with humility, “I 
never meant not to go, lady gal, after marster’s wife asked 
me. I only wanted you to beg me hard, an’ mebbe I’d 
git a kiss befo’ I started.” 

“ Wait till you come back, and see if you do your er- 
rand well,” Virgie spoke again. “ I shall not kiss you 
now.” 

“ I will,” cried little Roxy, to the amusement of them 
all, giving Samson a hearty smack from her little pouting 
mouth ; “ and now you’ve got it, think it’s Virgie’s kiss, 
and get your breakfast and start !” 

As they went to their abodes to make ready, Jimmy 
Phoebus found Jack Wonnell playing marbles with the 
boys at the court-house corner. 

“Jack,” he said, “I’m a-going to find Levin an’ that 
nigger trader. I may git in a peck of trouble up yonder 
on the Nanticoke. Tell all the pungy men whair I’m 
a-goin’, an’ what fur.” 

“Can’t I do somethin’ fur you, Jimmy? Can’t I give 
you one o’ my bell-crowns ; thair’s a-plenty of ’em left.” 

“Take my advice, Jack, an’ tie a stone to all them hats 
and sink ’em in the Manokin. Ole Meshach’s hat has 
made more hokey-pokey than the Bank of Somerset. 
Pore an’ foolish as you air, maybe your ole bell-crowns 
will ruin you.” 

The road to Salisbury — laid out in 1667, when “Cecil, 
Lord of Maryland and Avalon,” erected a county “in 
honor of our dear sister, the Lady Mary Somerset ” — fol- 
lowed the beaver-dams across the little river-heads, and 
pierced the flat pine-woods and open farms, and passed 
through two little hamlets, before our* travellers saw the 
broad mill-ponds and poplar and mulberry lined streets 
of the most active town — albeit without a court-house — 
in the lower peninsula. Jimmy Phoebus, driving the two 
horses and the family carriage, and Samson, following on 
his mule, descended into the hollow of Salisbury at the 


LONG SEPARATIONS. 


253 


dinner-hour, and stopped at the hotel. The snore of 
grist-mills, the rasp of mill-saws, the flow of pine-colored 
breast-water into the gorge of the village, the forest cy- 
press-trees impudently intruding into the obliquely-radi- 
ating streets, and humidity of ivy and creeper over many 
of the old, gable-chimneyed houses, the long lumber-yards 
reflected in the swampy harbor among the canoes, pun- 
gies, and sharpies moored there, the small houses side- 
wise to the sandy streets, the larger ones rising up the 
sandy hills, the old box-bush in the silvery gardens, the 
bridges close together, and the smell of tar and sawdust 
pleasantly inhaled upon the lungs, made a combination 
like a caravan around some pool in the Desert of the 
Nile. 

“ If there is any chance to catch my negroes,” Mrs. 
Custis said, “ I will go right on after dinner. Samson, 
send Dave, my daughter’s boy, to me immediately ; he is 
working in this hotel.” 

Samson found Dave to be none other than the black 
class-leader he had failed to overcome at the beginning 
of our narrative, but changes were visible in that individ- 
ual Samson had not expected. From having a clean, 
godly, modest countenance, becoming his professions, 
Dave now wore a sour, evil look ; his eyes were blood- 
shotten, and his straight, manly shoulders and chest, 
which had once exacted Samson’s admiration and envy, 
were stooped to conform with a cough he ever and anon 
made from deep in his frame. 

“Dave,” said Samson, “your missis's modder wants 
you, boy, to drive her to Vienny. What ails you, Dave, 
sence I larned you to box ?” 

“Is you de man?” Dave exclaimed, hoarsely; “den 
may de Lord forgive you, fur I never kin. Dat lickin’ I 
mos’ give you, made me a po’, wicked, backslidin’ fool.” 

“ Why, Dave, I jess saw you was a good man ; I didn’t 
mean you no harm, boy.” 


254 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ You ruined me, free nigger,” repeated the huge slave, 
with a scowl, partly of revenge and partly remorse. “ You 
set up my conceit dat I could box. I had never struck 
a chile till dat day ; after dat I went aroun’ pickin’ quar- 
rels wid bigger niggers, an’ low white men backed me to 
fight. I was turned out o’ my church ; I turned my back 
on de Lord ; whiskey tuk hold o’ me, Samson. De deb- 
bil has entered into Class-leader Dave.” 

“ Oh, brudder, wake up an’ do better. Yer, I give you 
a dollar, an’ want to be your friend, Davy, boy.” 

“ I’ll git drink wid it,” Dave muttered, going ; and, as 
he passed out of the stable-door he looked back at Sam- 
son fiercely, and exclaimed, “ May Satan burn your body 
as he will burn my soul. I hate you, man, long as you 
live !” 

Jimmy Phoebus remarked, a few moments afterwards, 
that Dave, dividing a pint of spirits with a lean little 
mulatto boy, put a piece of money in the boy’s hands, 
who then rode rapidly out of the tavern-yard upon a fleet 
Chincoteague pony. 

At two o’clock they again set forward, the man Dave 
driving the carriage and Jimmy Phoebus sitting beside 
him, while Samson easily kept alongside upon his old 
roan mule, the road becoming more sandy as they as- 
cended the plateau between the Wicomico and Nanticoke, 
and the carriage drawing hard. 

“ If it is too late to keep on beyond Vienna to-night,” 
said Mrs. Custis, “ I will stop there with my friends, the 
Turpins, and start again, after coffee, in the morning, and 
reach Cambridge for breakfast.” 

“ I will turn off at Spring Hill,” Samson spoke, “ and 
I kin feed my mule at sundown in Laurel an’ go to 
sleep.” 

In an hour they came in sight of old Spring Hill 
church, a venerable relic of the colonial Established 
Church, at the sources of a creek called Rewastico ; and 


LONG SEPARATIONS. 


255 

before they crossed the creek the driver, Dave, called 
“ Ho, ho !” in such an unnecessarily loud voice that Mrs. 
Custis reproved him sharply. Dave jumped down from 
the seat and appeared to be examining some part of the 
breeching, though Samson assured him that it was all 
right. As Dave finished his examination, he raised both 
hands above his head twice, and stretched to the height 
of his figure as he stood on the brow of a little hill. 

“ Missy Custis,” he apologized, as he turned back, “ I 
is tired mighty bad dis a’ternoon. Dat stable keeps me 
up half de night.” 

“Liquor tires you more, David,” Mrs. Custis spoke, 
sharply; “and that tavern is no place to hire you to with 
your appetite for drink, as I shall tell your master.” 

At this moment Jimmy Phoebus observed the lean lit- 
tle mulatto boy who had left the hotel come up out of the 
swampy place in the road and exchange a look of intelli- 
gence with Dave as he rode past on the pony. 

“ Boy,” cried Samson, “ is dat de road to Laurel ?” 

The boy made no answer, but, looking back once, tim- 
idly, ground his heels into the pony’s flank and darted 
into the brush towards Salisbury. 

“ Samson,” spoke Dave, “ you see dat ole woman in 
de cart yonder?” — he pointed to a figure ascending the 
rise in the ground beyond the brook — “ I know her, an’ 
she’s gwyn right to Laurel. She lives dar. It’s ten 
miles from dis yer turn-off, an’ she knows all dese yer 
woods-roads.” 

“ Good-bye, den, an’ may you find Aunt Hominy an’ 
de little chillen, Jimmy, an’ bring dem all home to Pren- 
cess Anne from dat ar Joe Johnson !” cried Samson, and 
trotted his mule through the swamp and away. Jimmy 
Phoebus saw him overtake the old woman in the cart and 
begin to speak with her as the scrubby woods swallowed 
them in. 

“What’s dat he said about Joe Johnson?” observed 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


256 

Dave, after a bad spell of coughing, as they cleared the 
old church and entered the sandy pine-woods. 

Mrs. Custis spoke up more promptly than Jimmy Phoe- 
bus desired, and told the negro about the escape of 
Hominy and the children, and the hope of Mr. Phoebus 
to head the party off as they ascended the Nanticoke 
towards the Delaware state-line. 

“You don’t want to git among Joe Johnson’s men, 
boss ?” said the red-eyed negro ; “ dey bosses all dis 
country heah, on boff sides o’ de state-line. All dat ain’t 
in wid dem is afraid o’ dem.” 

“ How fur is it from this road to Delaware, Dave ?” 
asked Phoebus. 

“We’re right off de corner-stone o’ Delawaw state dis 
very minute. It’s hardly a mile from whar we air. De 
corner’s squar as de stone dat sots on it, an’ is cut wid 
a pictur o’ de king’s crown.” 

“Mason and Dixon’s line they call it,” interpreted 
Mrs. Custis. 

“Do you know Joe Johnson, Dave?” 

“Yes, Marster Phoebus, you bet I does. He’s at Salis- 
bury, he’s at Vienna, he’s up yer to Crotcher’s Ferry, he’s 
all ober de country, but he don’t go to Delawaw any 
more in de daylight. He was whipped dar, an’ banished 
from de state on pain o’ de gallows. But he lives jess 
on dis side o’ de Delawaw line, so dey can’t git him in 
Delawaw. He calls his place Johnson’s Cross-roads: 
ole Patty Cannon lives dar, too. She’s afraid to stay in 
Delawaw now.” 

“ Why, what is the occupation of those terrible people 
at present ?” asked Mrs. Custis. 

No answer was made for a minute, and then Dave said, 
in a low, frightened voice, as he stole a glance at both of 
his companions out of his fiery, scarred eyes : 

“Kidnappin’, I ’spect.” 

“It’s everything that makes Pangymonum,” Jimmy 


LONG SEPARATIONS. 


257 


Phoebus explained ; “ that old woman, Patty Cannon, has 
spent the whole of a wicked life, by smoke ! — or ever 
sence she came to Delaware from Cannady, as the bride 
of pore Alonzo Cannon — a-makin’ robbers an’ blood- 
hounds out of the young men she could git hold of. 
Some of ’em she sets to robbin’ the mails, some to makin’ 
an’ passin’ of counterfeit money, but most of ’em she sets 
at stealin’ free niggers outen the State of Delaware ; and, 
when it’s safe, they steal slaves too. She fust made a 
tool of Ebenezer Johnson, the pirate of Broad Creek, an’ 
he died in his tracks a-fightin fur her. Then she took 
hold of his sons, Joe Johnson an’ young Ebenezer, an’ 
made ’em both outlaws an’ kidnappers, an’ Joe she mar- 
ried to her daughter, when Bruington, her first son-in-law, 
had been hanged. When Samson Hat, who is the whitest 
nigger I ever found, knocked Joe Johnson down in Prin- 
cess Anne, the night before last, he struck the worst man 
in our peninsula.” 

Dave listened to this recital with such a deep interest 
that his breath, strong with apple whiskey, came short 
and hot, and his hands trembled as he guided the horses. 
At the last words, he exclaimed : 

“Samson knocked Joe Johnson down? Den de deb- 
bil has got him, and means to pay him back !” 

“ What’s that ?” cried Jimmy Phoebus. 

The sweat stood on the big slave’s forehead, as if his 
imagination was terribly possessed, but before he could 
explain Mrs. Custis interrupted : 

“ I think it was said that old Patty Cannon corrupted 
Jake Purnell, who cut his throat at Snow Hill five years 
ago. He was a free negro who engaged slaves to steal 
other slaves and bring them to him, and he delivered 
them up to the white kidnappers for money; and nobody 
could account for his prosperity till a negro who had been 
beaten to death was found in the Pocomoke River, and 
three slaves who had been seen in his company were ar« 
17 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


258 

rested for the murder. They confessed that they had 
stolen the dead negro and he had escaped from them, 
and was so beaten with clubs, to make him tractable, that 
when they gave him to Purnell his life was all gone. 
Then he was thrown in the river, but his body came up 
after sinking, and the confession of the wretched tools 
explained to the slave-owners where all their missing ne- 
groes had gone. They marched and surrounded Pur- 
nelPs hut, and he was discovered burrowed beneath it. 
They brought the dogs, and fire to drive him out, and as 
he came out he cut his throat with desperate slashes from 
ear to ear.” 

During this narrative the man Dave had listened with 
rising nervous excitement, rolling his eyes as if in strong 
inward torment, till the concluding words inspired such 
terror in him that he dropped the reins, threw back his 
head, and shouted, with large beads of sweat all round 
his brow : 

“ Mercy ! mercy ! Have mercy ! Save me, oh, my 
Lord !” 

“He’s got a fit, I reckon,” cried Jimmy Phoebus, 
promptly grasping the reins as the horses started at the 
cry, and with his leg pinning Dave to the carriage-seat. 
At that moment the road descended into the hollow of 
Barren Creek, and, leaping down at the old Mineral 
Springs Hotel, a health resort of those days, Phoebus hu- 
manely procured water and freshened up the gasping ne- 
gro’s face. 

“ I declare, I am almost afraid to trust myself to this 
man,” Mrs. Custis observed, with more distaste than trep- 
idation. 

“ Every nigger in this region,” exclaimed Jimmy Phoe- 
bus, “ thinks Pangymonum’s cornin’ down at the dreaded 
name of Patty Cannon ; an’ this nigger’s gone most to 
ruin, any way.” * 

“Oh, marster,” exclaimed the slave, recovering his 


LONG SEPARATIONS. 


259 


speech and glaring wildly around, “ I hain’t been always 
the pore sinner rum an’ fightin’ has made of me. I 
served the Lord all my youth ; I praised his name an’ 
kept the road to heaven ; an’ thinkin’ of the shipwreck 
I’se made of a good conscience, an’ hearin’ missis tell of 
the end of Jake Purnell, it made me yell to de good Lord 
for mercy, mercy, oh, my soul !” 

His frightful agitation increased, and Jimmy Phcebus 
soothed him, good-naturedly saying : 

“ Mrs. Custis, I reckon you’d better let him come in 
the tavern and take a little sperits; it’ll strengthen his 
nerves an’ make him drive better.” 

As they drank at the old summer-resort bar, at that 
time in the height of its celebrity, and the only spa on the 
peninsula, south of the Brandywine Springs, Phoebus 
spoke low to the negro : 

“ Dave, somethin’ not squar and fair is a-workin’ yer, 
by smoke ! I’ve got my eye on you, nigger, an’ sure as 
hokey-pokey thair it’ll stay. You know my arrand yer, 
Dave : to save a pore, ignorant, deluded black woman from 
Joe Johnson’s band. Now, you’ve been a-cryin’ ‘ Mercy !’ 
I want you to show mercy by a-tellin’ of me whar I’m to 
overtake an’ sarch Levin Dennis’s catboat if it comes up 
the Nanticoke to-night with them people and Joe John- 
son aboard !” 

Having swallowed his liquor greedily, the colored man 
replied, with his former lowering countenance and eva- 
sive eyes : 

“ You can’t do nothin’ as low down de river as Vienny, 
’case de Nanticoke is too wide dar, and if you cross it 
at Vienny ferry, den you got de Norfwest Fork between 
you and Johnson’s Cross-roads, wid one ferry over dat, at 
Crotcher’s, an’ Joe Johnson owns all dat place. But you 
kin keep up dis side o’ de Nanticoke, Marster Phcebus, 
de same distance as from yer to Vienny, to de pint whar 
de Norfwest Fork come in. Sometimes Joe Johnson 


26 o 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


sails up dat big fork to get to his cross-roads. In gineral 
he keeps straight up de oder fork to Betty Twiford’s 
wharf, right on de boundary line.” 

“ How far is that?” 

“ It’s five miles from yer to Vienny, and five miles from 
yer to a landin’ opposite de Norfwest Fork. Four miles 
furder on you’re at Sharptown, an’ dar you can see Betty 
Twiford’s house on de bank two miles acrost de Nanti- 
coke.” 

“ Nine miles, then, to Sharptown ! He’s had the tide 
agin him since he entered the Nanticoke, and it’s not 
turned yit. By smoke ! I’ll look for a conveyance !” 

“ You can ride with me to the first landing,” spoke up 
a noble-looking man, whip in hand ; “ and after delaying 
a little there, I shall go on to Sharptown ferry and cross 
the river.” 

Phoebus accepted the invitation immediately, and cau- 
tioning Mrs. Custis to speak with less freedom in that 
part of the country, he bade her adieu, and took the va- 
cant seat in the stranger’s buggy. 

When Mrs. Custis came to Vienna ferry, and the horses 
and carriage went on board the scow to be rowed to the 
little, old, shipping settlement of that name, the negro 
Dave, standing at the horses’ heads, exchanged a few 
sentences with the ferry-keeper. 

“ Dave,” called Mrs. Custis, a little later on, “ you have 
no love, I see, for old Samson.” 

“ He made a boxer outen me an’ a bad man, missis.” 

“Do you know the man he works for — Meshach Mil- 
burn ?” 

“ No, missis. I never see him.” 

“ He wears a peculiar hat — nothing like gentlemen’s 
hats nowadays : it is a hat out of a thousand.” 

“ I never did see it, missis.” 

<£ You cannot mista'ke it for any other hat in the world. 
Now, Samson is the only servant and watchman at Mr. 


NANTICOKE PEOPLE. 


261 


Milburn’s store, and he attends to that disgraceful hat. 
If you can ever get it from him, Dave, and destroy it, you 
will be doing a useful act, and I will reward you well.” 

The moody negro looked up from his remorseful, bru- 
talized orbs, and said : 

“ Steal it?” 

“ Oh, no, I do not advise a theft, David — though such a 
wretched hat can have no legal value. It is an affliction 
to my daughter and Judge Custis and all of us, and you 
might find some way to destroy it — that is all.” 

“ I’ll git it some day,” the negro muttered ; and drove 
into the old tobacco-port of Vienna. 


Chapter XXII. 

NANTICOKE PEOPLE. 

A map would be out of place in a story, yet there are 
probably some who perceive that this is a story with a 
reality ; and if such will take any atlas and open it at the 
“ Middle States ” of the American republic, they will see 
that the little State of Delaware is fitted as nicely into a 
square niche of Maryland as if it were a lamp, or piece 
of statuary, standing on a mantelpiece. It stands there 
on a mantelshelf about forty miles wide, and rises to 
more than three times that height, making a perfectly 
straight north and south line at right angles with its base. 
Thus mortised into Maryland, its ragged eastern line is 
formed of the Atlantic Ocean and the broad Delaware 
Bay. 

The only considerable river within this narrow strip or 
Hermes of a state is the Nanticoke, which, like a crack in 
the wall, — and the same blow fractured the image on 
the mantel, — flows with breadth and tidal ebb and flow 
from the Chesapeake Bay through the Eastern Shore of 


262 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


Maryland into Delaware, and is there formed of two 
tidal sources, the one to the north continuing to be called 
the Nanticoke, and that to the south — nearly as imposing 
a stream — named Broad Creek. 

Nature, therefore, as if anticipating some foolish politi- 
cal boundaries on the part of man, prepared one drain 
and channel of ingress at the southwestern corner of 
Delaware to the splendid bay of Virginia. 

Around that corner of the little Delaware common- 
wealth, in a flat, poor, sandy, pine -grown soil, Jimmy 
Phoebus rode by the stranger in the afternoon of Octo- 
ber, with the sun, an hour high in the west, shining upon 
his dark, Greekish cheeks and neck, and he hearing the 
fall birds whistle and cackle in the mellowing stubble 
and golden thickets. 

The meadow-lark, the boy’s delight, was picking seed, 
gravel, and insects’ eggs in the fields — large and par- 
tridge-like, with breast washed yellow from the bill to 
the very knees, except at the throat, where hangs a brill- 
iant reticule of blackish brown ; his head and back are 
of hawkish colors — umber, brown, and gray — and in his 
carriage is something of the gamecock. He flies high, 
sometimes alone, sometimes in the flock, and is,our win- 
ter visitor, loving the old fields improvidence has aban- 
doned, and uttering, as he feeds, the loud sounds of chal- 
lenge, as if to cry, “Abandoned by man ; pre-empted by 
me !” 

Jimmy Phoebus also heard the bold, bantering wood- 
pecker, with his red head, whose schoolmaster is the 
squirrel, and whose tactics of keeping a tree between 
him and his enemy the Indian fighters adopted. He 
mimics the tree-frog’s cry, and migrates after October, 
like other voluptuaries, who must have the round year 
warm, and fruit and eggs always in market. Dressed in 
his speckled black swallow-tail coat, with his long pen in 
his mouth and his shirt-bosom faultlessly white, the wood- 


NANTICOKE PEOPLE. 


263 

pecker works like some Balzac in his garret, making the 
tree-top lively as he spars with his fellow- Bohemians ; 
and being sure himself of a tree, and clinging to it with 
both tail and talons, he esteems everything else that lives 
upon it to be an insect at which he may run his bill or 
spit his tongue — that tongue which is rooted in the brain 
itself. 

In the hollow golden bowl of echoing evening the sail- 
or noted, too, the flicker, in golden pencilled wings and 
back of speckled umber and mottled white breast, with 
coal-black collar and neck and head of cinnamon. His 
golden tail* droops far below his perch, and, running 
downward along the tree-trunk, it flashes in the air like 
a sceptre over the wood-lice he devours with his pickaxe 
bill. “ Go to the ant, thou sluggard !” was an instigation 
to murder in the flicker, who loves young ants as much 
as wild-cherries or Indian corn, and is capable of taking 
any such satire seriously upon things to eat. Not so elfin 
and devilish as the small black woodpecker, he is full of 
bolder play. 

The redbird, like the unclaimed blood of Abel, flew to 
the little trees that grew low, as if to cover Abel’s altar ; 
the jack-snipe chirped in the swampy spots, like a divin- 
ity student, on his clean, long legs, probing with his bill 
and critical eye the Scriptures of the fields ; the quail 
piped like an old bachelor with family cares at last, as 
he led his mate where the wild seeds were best; and 
through the air darted voices of birds forsaken or on 
doctor’s errands, crying “ Phoebe ? Phoebe ?” or “ Killed 
he ! killed he !” 

“Are you a dealer?” asked the gentleman of Jimmy 
Phoebus. 

“Just a little that way,” said Jimmy, warily, “when I 
kin git somethin’ cheap.” 

The stranger had a pair of keen, dancing eyes, and a 
long, eloquent, silver-gray face that might have suited a 


264 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


great general, so fine was its command, and yet too nar- 
rowly dancing in the eyes, like spiders in a well, disturb- 
ing the mirror there. 

“ Ha !” chuckled the man, as if his eyes had chuckled, 
so poorly did that sound represent his lordly stature and 
look of high spirit — “ha! that’s what brings them all to 
my neighbor Johnson : a fair quotient !” 

“ Quotient ?” repeated Jimmy. 

“Johnson’s a great factor hereabout,” continued the 
military-looking man, bending his handsome eyes on the 
bay captain, as if there was a business secret between 
them, and peering at once mischievously and nobly ; 
“he makes the quotient to suit. He leaves the suttle 
large and never stints the cloff.” 

“ He don’t narry a feller down to the cloth he’s got, 
sir?” assented Jimmy, dubiously. 

“ Why should he ? His equation is simple : I suppose 
you know what it is.” 

“ Not ezackly,” answered Phoebus, pricking up his ears 
to learn. 

“ Well, it is force and class sympathy against a dead 
quantity : laws which have no consignees, cattle which 
have no lawyer and no tongue, rights which have lapsed 
by their assertion being suspended, till demand and sup- 
ply, like a pair of bulldogs, tear what is left to pieces. 
Armed with his ca. sa., my neighbor Johnson offsets every- 
body’s ft. fa., serves his writ the first, and makes to gentle- 
men like you a satisfactory quotient. But he cuts no 
capers with Isaac and Jacob Cannon!” 

“ I expect now that you are Jacob Cannon ?” remarked 
the tawny sailor, not having understood a word of what 
preceded. “ If that’s the case, I’m glad to know your 
name, and thank you for givin’ me this lift.” 

By a bare nod, just intelligible, Mr. Cannon signified 
that the guess would do ; and still meditating aloud in 
his small, grand way, continued : 


NANTICOKE PEOPLE. 


265 

“We let neighbor Johnson and his somewhat peculiar 
mother-in-law make such commerce as suits him, provid- 
ed he studies to give us no inconvenience. That is his 
equation ; with his quotient we have no concern other 
than our slight interest in his wastage, as when Madame 
Cannon rides down to change a bill and leaves an order 
for supplies — rum, chiefly, I believe. Gentlemen like you 
come into this country to deal, replevin, or what not, and 
we say to you all, ‘ Don’t tread on us — that is all.’ We 
shall not look into your parcels, nor lie awake of nights 
to hear alarms; but harm Isaac and Jacob Cannon one 
ha’pence and levari facias, fi. fa. /” 

“ And fee-fo-fum,” ejaculated Jimmy, cheerfully; “ I’ve 
hearn it before.” 

Looking again with some curiosity at his companion, 
Phoebus saw that he was not beyond fifty years of age, 
of a spare, lofty figure — at least six feet four high — sit- 
ting straight and graceful as an Indian, his clothes well- 
tailored, his countenance and features both stern and 
refined ; every feature perfected, and all keen without 
being hard or angular — and yet Jimmy did not like him. 
There seemed to have been made a commodore or a 
general — some one designed for deeds of chivalry and 
great philanthropy ; and yet around and between the 
dancing eyes spider lines were drawn, as if the fine high 
brain of Jacob Cannon had put aside matters that matched 
it and meddled with nothing that ascended higher above 
the world than the long white bridge of his nose. His 
sentiments apparently fell no further towards his heart 
than that ; his brain belonged to the bridge of his nose. 

“Another Meshach Milburn, by smoke!” concluded 
Jimmy. 

After a little pause Phoebus inquired into the charac- 
ter of the people in this apparently new region of country. 

“The quotient of much misplanting and lawyering is 
the lands on the Nanticoke,” spoke the gray-nosed Apoh 


266 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


lo ; “ the piece of country directly before us, in the rear 
of my neighbor Johnson’s cross-roads, was an old Indian 
reservation for seventy years, and so were three thousand 
acres to our right, on Broad Creek. The Indian is a bad 
factor to civilize his white neighbors ; he does not know 
the luxury of the law, that grand contrivance to make the 
equation between the business man and the herd. Ha, 
ha!” 

Mr. Cannon chuckled as if he, at least, appreciated the 
law, and turned the fine horsy bridge of his nose, all gray 
with dancing eyelight, enjoyingly upon Mr. Phoebus. 

“ The Indians were long imposed upon, and when they 
went away, at the brink of the Revolutionary War, they 
left a demoralized white race ; and others who moved in 
upon the deserted lands of the Nanticokes were, if possi- 
ble, more Indian than the Indians. This peninsula never 
produced a great Indian, but when Ebenezer Johnson 
settled on Broad Creek it possessed a greater savage 
than Tecumseh. He took what he wanted and appealed 
to nature, like the Indian. He stole nothing ; he merely 
took it. He served, with anything convenient, from his 
fists to a blunderbuss, his ft . fa. and his ca. sa. upon won- 
dering but submissive mankind. Need I say that this 
was before the perfect day of Isaac and Jacob Cannon?” 

“They would have socked it to him, I reckon,” Jimmy 
exclaimed, consonantly. 

Mr. Jacob Cannon gave a tender smile, such as the 
gray horse emits at the prospect of oats, and continued : 

“Such was the multiplicand to make the future race. 
Here, too, raged the boundary-line debate between Penns 
and Calverts, with occasional raids and broken heads, 
and a noble suit in chancery of fifty years, till no man’s 
title was known, and, instead of improving their lands, our 
voluptuous predecessors improved chiefly their opportu- 
nities. You cut sundry cords of wood and hauled it to 
the landing, and Ebenezer Johnson coolly scowed it over 


NANTICOKE PEOPLE. 


267 

to his paradise at the mouth of Broad Creek. You had 
a little parcel of negroes, but the British war-ships, in two 
successive wars, lay in the river mouth and beckoned 
them off. Having no interest in any certain property, 
the foresters of the Nanticoke would rather trade with 
the enemy than fight for foolish ideas; and so this re- 
gion was more than half Tory, and is still half pas- 
sive, the other half predatory. To neither half of such 
a quotient belongs the house of Isaac and Jacob Can- 
non !” 

His nostrils swelled a trifle with military spirit, and he 
raised the bridge of his nose delicately, turning to observe 
his instinctive companion. 

“ If it’s any harm I won’t ask it,” the easy-going mari- 
ner spoke, “but air you two Cannons ary kin to ole Patty 
Cannon ?” 

Mr. Cannon smiled. 

“In Adam all sinned — there we may have been connect- 
ed,” he said. “The question you ask may one day be 
actionable, sir. The Cannons are a numerous people in 
our region, of fair substance, such as we have, but they 
showed nothing to vary the equation of subsistence here 
till there arose the mother of Isaac and Jacob Cannon. 
She was a remarkable woman ; unassisted, she procured 
the charter for Cannon’s Ferry, and made the port settle- 
ment of that name by the importance her ferry acquired ; 
and when she died there were foundjn her house nine 
hundred dollars in silver — for she never would take any 
paper money — the earnings of that sequestered ferry, to 
start her sons on their career. She knew the peculiar 
character of some of her neighbors — how lightly meum 
and tuu?n sat upon their fears or consciences — but she 
kept no guard except her own good gray eyes and daunt- 
less heart over that accumulating pile of little sixpences, 
for there was but one spirit as bold as she in all this re- 
gion of the world — ” 


268 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“And that, I reckon,” observed Jimmy Phoebus, “was 
ole Patty Cannon herself.” 

Mr. Jacob Cannon slightly bowed his head, and spoke 
aloud from an inner communion : 

“Forgive me, mother, that I make the comparison! 
Thy frugal oil, that burned with pure and lonely widow’s 
flame at Cannon’s Ferry window, the traveller hailed with 
comfort in his heart, and blessed the enterprise. But to 
compound the equation another unknown quantity of fe- 
male force arose beside my mother’s lamp. A certain 
young Cannon, distantly of our stock, must needs go see 
the world, and he returned with a fair demon of a bride, 
and settled, too, at Cannon’s Ferry. He lived to see the 
wondrous serpent he had warmed in his arms, and died, 
they say, of the sting. But she lived on, and, shrinking 
back into the woods to a little farm my mother’s sons 
rented to her, she lighted there a Jack-o’-the-lantern many 
a traveller has pursued who never returned to tell. With 
Ebenezer Johnson’s progeny and her own siren sisters, 
who followed Madame Cannon to the Nanticoke, the 
nucleus of a settlement began, and has existed for twenty 
years, that only the Almighty’s venire facias can explore.”* 

“That’s my arrand, Jacob Cannon,” quietly remarked 
Jimmy Phoebus. “I’m a pore man from Prencess Anne. 
If you took me for a nigger-dealer you did me as pore a 


* “ Slavery, in the State of Delaware, never had any constitutional 
recognition. It existed in the colonial period by custom, as over 
the whole country, but subject to be regulated or abolished by sim- 
ple legislative enactment. Very early the State of Delaware under- 
took its regulation, with the view of securing the personal and indi- 
vidual rights of the persons so held in bondage, and to prevent the 
increase by importation. In 1787 the export of Delaware slaves was 
forbidden to the Carolinas, Georgia, and the West Indies, and two 
years later the prohibition was extended to Maryland and Virginia, 
and it never was repealed, and in 1793 the first penalties were en- 
acted against kidnappers.’’ — Letter of Hon . N. B. Smithers to the 
Author 


twiford’s island. 


269 

compliment as when I asked if you was Patty Cannon’s 
kin. But I have got just one gal to love and just one 
life to lose, an’ if God takes me thar, I’m a-goin’ to John- 
son’s Cross-roads.” 

Mr. Jacob Cannon turned and examined his compan- 
ion with some twinkling care, but showed no personal 
concern. 

“ Every man must be his own security, my dark-skinned 
friend, till he can find a bailsman. That place I never 
take — neither the debtor’s nor the security. The firm 
of Isaac and Jacob Cannon allows no trespass, and fur- 
ther concern themselves not. But we are at the Nanti- 
coke.” 

“I’m obliged to you for the lift, Mr. Jacob Cannon,” 
said Jimmy, springing down, “and hope you may never 
find it inconvenient to have let such a pack of wolves use 
your neighborhood to trespass on human natur.” 


Chapter XXIII. 
twiford’s island. 

Some piles of wood and an old wharf were at the river- 
side, and a little scow, half filled with water, and with only 
a broken piece of paddle in it, was the only boat the 
pungy captain could find. The merchant’s buggy was 
soon out of sight, and the wide, gray Nanticoke, several 
hundred yards wide, and made wider by a broad river 
that flowed into it through low bluffs and levels imme- 
diately opposite, was receiving the strong shadows of ap- 
proaching night, and the tide was running up it violent 
and deep. 

Long lines of melancholy woods shut both these rivers 
in ; an osprey suddenly struck the surface of the water, 
like a drowning man, and rose as if it had escaped from 


370 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


some demon in the flood ; the silence following his plunge 
was deeper than ever, till a goatsucker, noiselessly mak- 
ing his zigzag chase, cried, as if out of eternal gloom, his 
solemn command to “ Whip poor Will.” Those notes re- 
peated — as by some slave ordering his brother to be 
lashed, or one sympathetic soul in perdition made the 
time-caller to another’s misery — floated on the evening 
light as if the oars of Charon echoed on the Styx, and 
broken hearts were crossing over. 

Alone, unintimidated, but not altogether comfortable, 
Jimmy Phoebus proceeded to bail out the old scow, and 
wished he had accepted one of Jack Wonnell’s hats to do 
the task, and, when he had finished it, the stars and clouds 
were manoeuvring around each other in the sky, with the 
clouds the more aggressive, and finally some drops of 
rain punctured the long, bare muscles of the inflowing 
tide, making a reticule of little pittings, like a net of beads 
on drifting women’s tresses. As night advanced, a puff- 
ing something ascended the broad, black aisle of this for- 
est river, and slowly the Norfolk steamboat rumbled past, 
with passengers for the Philadelphia stage. Then silence 
drew a sheet of fog around herself and passed into a cold 
torpor of repose, affected only by the waves that licked 
the shores with intermittent thirst. 

The waterman, regretting a little that he had not taken 
his stand at Vienna, where human assistance might have 
been procured, and thinking that the poison airs might 
also afflict him with Meshach Milburn’s complaints, 
fought sleep away till midnight, straining his eyes and 
ears ever and anon for signs of some sail ; but nothing 
drew near, and he had insensibly closed his lids and 
might have soon been in deep sleep, but that he sudden- 
ly heard, between his dreams and this world, something 
like a little baby moaning in the night. 

He sat up in the damp scow, where he had been lying, 
and listened with all his senses wide open, and once again 


TWIFORD S ISLAND. 


271 


the cry was wafted upon the river zephyrs, and before 
it died away the sailor’s paddle was in the water, and 
his frail, awkward vessel was darting across the tide. 

He saw, in the black night, what none but a sailor’s eyes 
would have seen, a thing not visible, but divined, coming 
along on the bosom of the river ; and his ears saw it the 
clearer as that little cry continued — now stopped, now 
stifled, now rising, now nearly piercing ; and then there 
was a growl, momentary and loud, and a rattle as of feet 
over wood, and a stroke or thud, or heavy concussion, 
and then a white thing rose up against the universal ink 
and rushed on the little scow, sucking water as it came — 
the cat-boat under full sail. 

Phoebus had paddled for the opposite shore of the river 
to prevent the object of his quest escaping up the North- 
west Fork, yet to be in its path if it beat up the main 
fork, and, by a piece of instinctive calculation, he had run 
nearly under the cat-boat bows. 

“Ahoy, there !” cried Jimmy, standing up in his tipsy 
little skiff j “ahoy the Ellenory Dennis! I’m a-comin’ 
aboard.” 

And with this, the paddle still in his hand, and his 
knees and feet nearly sentient in their providence of 
uses, the sailor threw himself upon the low gunwale, and 
let it glide through his palms till he could see the man at 
the helm. 

There was no light to be called so, but the helmsman 
was yet perceived by the sailor’s experienced eyes, and 
he grappled the gunwale firmer, and, preparing to swing 
himself on board, shouted hoarsely, 

“ You Levin Dennis, I see you, by smoke ! You know 
Jimmy Phoebus is your friend, an’ come out of this Pan- 
gymonum an’ stop a-breakin’ of your mother’s heart! 
Oh, I see you, my son !” 

If he did see Levin Dennis, Levin did not see Jimmy 
Phoebus, nor apparently hear him, but stood motionless 


272 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


at the helm as a frozen man, looking straight on in the 
night. The rigging made a little flapping, the rudder 
creaked on its hooks, but every human sound was still 
as the grave now, and the boy at the helm seemed petri- 
fied and deaf and blind. 

The pungy captain’s temper rose, his superstition not 
being equal to that of most people, and he cried again, 

“ You’re a disgrace to the woman that bore you. Hell’s 
a-waitin’ for your pore tender body an’ soul. Heave 
ahoy an’ let drop that gaff, an’ take me aboard, Levin !” 

Still silent and passive as a stone, the youthful figure 
at the helm did not seem to breathe, and the cat-boat cut 
the water like a fish-hawk. 

A flash of bright fire lighted up the vessel’s side, a loud 
pistol-shot rang out, and the sailor’s hands loosened from 
the gunwale and clutched at the air, and he felt the black 
night fall on him as if he had pulled down its ebony col- 
umns upon his head. 

He knew no more for hours, till he felt himself lying 
in cold water and saw the gray morning coming through 
tree-boughs over his head. He had a thirsty feeling and 
pain somewhere, and for a few minutes did not move, 
but lay there on his shoulder, holding to something and 
guessing what it might be, and where he might be mak- 
ing his bed in this chilly autumn dawn. 

His hand was clutching the a-stern plank of the old 
scow, and was so stiff he could not for some time open 
it. The scow was aground upon a marshy shore, in which 
some large trees grew, and were the fringes of a woods 
that deepened farther back. 

“By smoke!” muttered Jimmy, “if yer ain’t hokey- 
pokey. But I reckon I ain’t dead, nohow.” 

With this he lifted the other hand, that had been 
stretched beneath his head, and was also numb with 
cramp and cold, and it was full of blood. 

“Well,” said Jimmy, “that feller did hit me; but, if 


TWI ford's island. 


273 

he’ll lend me his pistol, I’ll fire a straighter slug than 
his’n. I wonder where it is.” 

Feeling around his head, the captain came to a raw 
spot, the touch of which gave him acute pain, and made 
the blood flow freshly as he withdrew his hand, and he 
could just speak the words, “Water, or I’ll — ” when he 
swooned away. 

The sun was up and shining cheerily in the tree-tops 
as Phoebus, who was its name-bearer, recovered his senses 
again, and he bathed his face, still lying down, and tore 
a piece of his raiment off for a bandage, and, by the mir- 
ror of a still, green pool of water, examined his wound, 
which was in the fleshy part of his cheek — a little groove 
or gutter, now choked with almost dried blood, where the 
ball had ploughed a line. It had probably struck a bone, 
but had not broken it, and this had stunned him. 

“ I was so ugly before that Ellenory wouldn’t more 
than half look at me,” Jimmy mused, <f an’ now, I ’spect, 
she’ll never kiss that air cheek.” 

He then bandaged his cheek roughly, sitting up, and 
took a survey of the scenery. 

The river was here a full quarter of a mile wide, on 
the opposite shore bluffy, and in places bold, but, on the 
side where Phoebus had drifted with the tide, clutching 
his old scow with mortal grip, there extended a point of 
level woods and marsh or “cripple,” as if by the action 
of some back-water, and this low ground appeared to 
have a considerable area, and was nowhere tilled or 
fenced, or gave any signs of being visited. 

But the opposite or northern shore was quite other- 
wise ; there the river had a wide bend or hollow to re- 
ceive two considerable creeks, and changed its course 
almost abruptly from west to southwest, giving a grand 
view of its wide bosom for the distance of more than two 
miles into Maryland ; and the prospect was closed in 
that direction by a whitish-looking something, like lime or 
18 


THi: ENTAILED HAT. 


274 

shell piles, standing against the background of pale blue 
woods and bluffs. 

Right opposite the spot where Phoebus had been 
stranded, a cleared farm came out to the Nanticoke, af- 
fording a front of only a single field, on the crest of a 
considerable sand-bluff — elevations looking magnified 
here, where nature is so level ; and at one end of this 
field, which was planted in corn that was now clinging 
dry to the naked stalks, an old lane descended to a shell- 
paved wharf of a stumpy, square form ; and almost at the 
other, or western, end of the clearing stood a respectable 
farm-house of considerable age, with a hipped roof and 
three queer dormer windows slipping down the steeper half 
below, and two chimneys, not built outside of the house, 
as was the general fashion, but naturally rising out of the 
old English-brick gables. All between the gables was 
built of wood ; a porch of one story occupied nearly half 
the centre of that side of the house facing the river ; and 
to the right, against the house and behind it, were kitch- 
en, smoke-house, corn-cribs, and other low tenements, in 
picturesque medley ; while to the left crouched an old, 
low building on the water’s edge, looking like a brandy- 
still or a small warehouse. The road from the wharf and 
lane passed along a beach, and partly through the river 
water, to enter a gate between this shed and the dwell- 
ing ; and from the garden or lawn, on the bluff before the 
latter, arose two tall and elegant trees, a honey-locust 
and a stalwart mulberry. 

“Now, I never been by this place before,” Jimmy Phoe- 
bus muttered, “ but, by smoke ! yon house looks to me 
like Betty Twiford’s wharf, an’, to save my life, I can’t 
help thinkin’ yon white spots down this side of the river 
air Sharptown. If that’s the case, which state am I in ?” 

He rose to his feet, bailed the scow, which was nearly 
full of water, and began to paddle along the shore, and, 
seeing something white, he landed and parted the bushes, 


TWIFORD’S IK.AND. 


275 


and found it to be a stone of a bluish marble, bearing on 
one side the letter M, and on the other the letter P, and 
a royal crown was also carved upon it. 

“ Yer’s one o’ Lord Baltimore’s boundary stones,” Phce- 
bus exclaimed. “ Now see the rascality o’ them kid- 
nappers ! Yon house, I know, is Twiford’s, because it’s 
a’most on the state-line, but, I’m ashamed to say, it’s a 
leetle in Maryland. And that lane, coming down to the 
wharf, is my way to Joe Johnson’s Pangymonum at his 
cross-roads.” 

A sound, as of some one singing, seemed to come from 
the woods near by, and Phoebus, listening, concluded that 
it was farther along the water, so he paddled softly for- 
ward till a small cove or pool led up into the swamp, and 
its shores nowhere offered a dry landing ; yet there were 
recent foot-marks deeply trodden in the bog, and disclosed 
up the slope into the woods, and from their direction 
seemed to come the mysterious chanting. 

“ My head’s bloody and I’m wet as a musk-rat, so I reck- 
on I ain’t afraid of gittin’ a little muddy,” and with this the 
navigator stepped from the scow in swamp nearly to his 
middle, and pulled himself up the slope by main strength. 

“ I believe my soul this yer is a island,” Jimmy re- 
marked; “a island surrounded with mud, that’s wuss to 
git to than a water island.” 

The tall trees increased in size as he went on and en- 
tered a noble grove of pines, through whose roar, like an 
organ accompanied by a human voice, the singing was 
heard nearer and nearer, and, following the track of pre- 
vious feet, which had almost made a path, Phoebus came 
to a space where an axe had laid the smaller bushes 
low around a large loblolly pine that spread its branches 
like a roof only a few feet from the ground ; and there, 
fastened by a chain to the trunk, which allowed her to go 
around and around the tree, and tread a nearly bare place 
in the pine droppings or “ shats,” sat a black woman, 


276 THE ENTAILED HAT. 

singing in a long, weary, throat-sore wail. Jimmy listened 
to a few lines : 

“ Deep-en de woun’ dy han’s have made 
In dis weak, helpless soul, 

Till mercy wid its mighty aid 
De-scen to make me whole ; 

Yes, Lord ! 

De-scen to make me whole.” 

A little negro child, perhaps three years old, was lying 
asleep on the ground at the woman’s feet, in an old tat- 
tered gray blanket that might have been discarded from 
a stable. Near the child was a wooden box, in which 
were a coarse loaf of corn-bread and some strips of bacon, 
and a wooden trough, hollowed out of a log, contained 
water. The woman’s face was scratched and bruised, 
and, as she came to some dental sounds in her chant, 
her teeth were revealed, with several freshly missing in 
front, and her lips were swollen and the gums blistered 
and raw. 

She glanced up as Phoebus came in sight, looked at 
him a minute in blank curiosity, as if she did not know 
what kind of animal he was, and then continued her 
song, wearily, as if she had been singing it for days, 
and her mind had gone into it and was out of her con- 
trol. As she moved her feet from time to time, the chain 
rattled upon her ankles. 

“Well,” said Jimmy, “if this ain’t Pangymonum, I 
reckon I’ll find it at Johnson’s Cross-roads ! Git up thar, 
gal, an’ let me see what ails you.” *• 

The woman rose mechanically, still singing in the 
shrill, cracked, weary drone, and, as she rose, the baby 
awoke and began to cry, and she stooped and took it up, 
and, patting it with her hands, sang on, as if she would 
fall asleep singing, but could not. 

The chain, strong and rusty, had been very recently 
welded to her feet by a blacksmith; the fresh rivet at- 


twiford’s island. 


277 


tested that, and there were also pieces of charcoal in the 
pine strewings, as if fire had been brought there for 
smith’s uses. Jimmy Phoebus took hold of the chain and 
examined it link by link till it depended from a powerful 
staple driven to the heart of the pine-tree ; though rusty, it 
was perfect in every part, and the condition of the staple 
showed that it was permanently retained in its position, 
as if to secure various and successive persons, while the 
staple itself had been driven above the reach of the hands, 
as by a man standing on some platform or on another’s 
shoulders. 

Phcebus took the chain in his short, powerful arms, 
and, giving a little run from the root of the tree, threw all 
the strength of his compact, heavy body into a jerk, and 
let his weight fall upon it, but did not produce the slight- 
est impression. 

“ There’s jess two people can unfasten this chain,” ex- 
claimed Jimmy, blowing hard and kneading his palms, 
after two such exertions, “ one of em’s a blacksmith and 
t’other’s a woodchopper. Gal, how did you git yer ?” 

The woman, a young and once comely person of about 
twenty-eight years of age, sang on a moment as if she 
did not understand the question, till Phcebus repeated it 
with a kinder tone : 

“ Pore, abused creatur, tell me as your friend ! I ain’t 
none of these kidnappers. Git your pore, scattered wits 
together an’ tell a friend of all women an’ little childern 
how he kin help you, fur time’s worth a dollar a second, 
an’ bloody vultures are nigh by. Speak, Mary !” 

The universal name seemed timely to this woman ; she 
stopped her chanting and burst into tears. 

“ My husband brought me here,” she said, between her 
long sobs. “ He sold me. I give him everything I had 
and loved him, too, and he sold me — me and my baby.” 

“ I reckon you don’t belong fur down this way, Mary ? 
You don’t talk like it.” 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


278 

“No, sir ; I belong to Philadelphia. I was a free 
woman and a widow; my husband left me a little money 
and a little house and this child ; another man come and 
courted me, a han’some mulatto man, almost as white as 
you. He told me he had a farm in Delaware, and want- 
ed me to be his wife ; he promised me so much and 
was so anxious about it, that I listened to him. Oh, he 
was a beautiful talker, and I was lonesome and wanted 
love. I let him sell my house and give him the money, 
and started a week ago to come to my new home. Oh, 
he did deceive me so; he said he loved me dearly.” 

She began to cry again, and her mind seemed to wan- 
der, for the next sentence was disconnected. Jimmy 
took the baby in his arms and kissed it without any scru- 
ples, and the child’s large, black eyes looked into his as 
if he might be its own father, while he dandled it tenderly. 

“ The foxes has come an’ barked at me two nights,” 
said the woman ; “ they wanted the bacon, I ’spect. The 
water-snakes has crawled around here in the daytime, 
and the buzzards flew right down before me and looked 
up, as if they thought I ought to be dead. But I wasn’t 
afraid : that man I give my love to was so much worse 
than them, that I just sung and let them look at me.” 

“You say he sold you, Mary?” 

The woman rubbed her weary eyes and slowly recol- 
lected where she had left off. 

“ We moved our things on a vessel to Delaware, and 
come up a creek to a little town in the marshes, and there 
we started for my husband’s farm. He said we had come 
to it in the night. I couldn’t tell, but I saw a house in 
the woods, and was so tired I went to sleep with my baby 
there, and in the night I found men in the room, and one 
of them, a white man, was tying my feet.” 

A crow cawed with a sound of awe in the pine tops, 
and squirrels were running tamely all round about as she 
hesitated. 


TWI ford's island. 


279 

“ I thought then of the kidnappers of Delaware, for I 
had heard about them, and I jumped out of bed and 
fought for my life. They knocked me down and the rope 
around my feet tripped me up ; but I fought with my teeth 
after my hands was tied, too, and I bit that white man’s 
knees, and then he picked up a fire-shovel, or something 
of iron, and knocked my teeth out. My last hope was al- 
most gone when I saw my husband coming in, and I cried 
to him, ‘ Save me ! save me, darling !’ He had a rope in 
his hand, and, before I could understand it, he had slipped 
it over my neck and choked me.” 

“ Your own husband ? I can’t believe it, to save my 
life !” ' 

“ I didn’t believe it, neither, till I heard him say, when 
they loosened the slip-knot that had strangled me — the 
voice was his I had trusted so much ; I never could for- 
get it ! — ‘ Eben,’ he said, ‘ I’ve took down every mole and 
spot on her body and can swear to ’em, for I’ve learned 
’em by heart, and you won’t have no trouble a-sellin’ her, 
as she can’t testify.” 

“The imp of Pangymonum !” Jimmy cried. “ He had 
married you to note down your marks, and by ’em swear 
you to be a slave !” 

“The white man tried to sell me to a farmer, and then 
I told what I had heard them say. He believed me, and 
told them the mayor of Philadelphia had a reward out 
for them, for kidnappin’ free people, already. Then they 
talked together — a little scared they was— and tied me 
again, and hrought me on a cart through the woods to 
the river and fetched me here, and chained me, and told 
me if I ever said I was free, to another man, they meant 
to sell my baby and to drown me in the river.” 

She finished with a chilly tremor and a low wail like 
an infant, but the sailor passed her baby into her arms to 
engage her, and said : 

“The Lord is still a-countin’ of his sparrows, or I 


280 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


wouldn’t have been on this arrand, by smoke ! To drift 
yer, hangin’ senseless to that ole scow, must have been to 
save you, Mary. This is a island where they chains up 
property, I reckon, that is bein’ follered up too close. 
Time’s very precious, Mary, but I’ve got a sailor’s knife 
yer, an’ I’ll stay to cut the staple out o’ this ole pine if 
they come an’ kill me. You take an’ wash my face off 
outen that water-trough while I bite a bit of the bacon.” 

He took the child again and amused it while the wom- 
an carefully cleaned his wound and rebandaged it so that 
he could breathe and see and eat, though the cotton folds 
wrapped in much of his face like a mask. He then ex- 
amined the chain again, especially where it was rivetted 
at the feet, and lifted a large iron ball weighing several 
pounds, which was also affixed to her ankle, so that she 
could not climb the tree. Her ankle he found blistered 
by the red-hot rivet being smithed so barbarously close 
to the flesh. 

“ Don’t leave me, oh ! don’t leave me here to die,” the 
woman pleaded, as he started into the woods. 

“ I’ll stay by you an’ we’ll die together, if we must; but 
it’s not my idee to die at all, Mary. I’m goin’ to bring 
that air scow ashore while I cut a hickory, if I can find 
one, to break this yer. chain.” 

Plunging again into the mud nearly to his waist, Phoe- 
bus pulled the scow up into the woods, and had barely 
concealed himself when he saw come out of the creek 
below Twiford’s house a cat-boat like the Ellenora Den- 
nis , , and stand towards the island in the cripple. 

“ The tide’s agin ’em, an’ they must make a tack to get 
yer,” Jimmy muttered; “but I’m afraid this knife will 
have to go to the heart of some son of Pangymonum in 
ten minutes, or Ellenory Dennis never agin be pestered 
by her ugly lover.” 

He was seized with a certain frenzy of strength and 
discernment at the danger he was in, and, as he carried 


twiford’s island. 


281 


the scow onward and across the woodland island, heavy 
as it was, he also noted a single small hickory tree on 
that farther margin, and threw himself against it and bent 
it down, and plunged his knife into the straining fibres 
so that it crackled and splintered in his hand. He leaped 
to the tree and scaled it as he had often climbed a mast, 
and he thrust the sapling under the staple, trimming the 
point down with the knife as he clutched the tree by his 
knees, and then, catching the young hickory like a lever, 
he dropped down the pine trunk and got his shoulder un- 
der the sapling and brought the weight of his body des- 
perately against it. The staple bent upward in the tree, 
but did not loosen. 

At that instant the scraping- of a boat upon the mud 
was heard, and the black woman fell upon her knees. 

“Pray, but do it soft,” Jimmy whispered; “an’ not a 
cry from the child, or there’ll be a murder !” 

He had rapidly trimmed the hickory stem of its branch- 
es while he spoke, so that it could penetrate the arborage 
of the tree from above, and climbing higher, like a cat, he 
worked the point of the lever downwards into the now 
crooked staple, and threw himself out of the tree against 
the sapling, which bent like a bow nearly double, but 
would not break, and, as the staple yielded and flew out, 
the chain and the deliverer fell together on the soft pine 
litter. 

“ Hark !” exclaimed a voice through the woods. 

“ What was it ?” asked another voice. 

“ Come !” Phoebus murmured, and gathered together 
the woman, the child, and the chain and ball, and stepped, 
long and silent as a rabbit’s leaps, through the awe- 
hushed pines, carrying the whole burden on his shoul- 
ders. 

He sat them in the scow, which sank to the edges, and, 
covered by a protruding point of woods, pushed off into 
the deep river, yet guiding the frail vessel in to the sides 


282 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


of the stream, away from the influence of the out-running 
tide. As the scow turned the first crease or elbow in the 
river, it began to sink. 

“ If you make a sound you are a slave fur life,” whis- 
pered the waterman, as he slipped overboard and began 
to swim, with his hand upon the stern. As he did this, 
straining every muscle of his countenance to keep afloat, 
the wound in his cheek began to bleed again, and he felt 
his strength going. Down, down he began to settle, till 
the water reached his nostrils, and the woman heard him 
sigh as he was sinking : 

“ Fd do it— an’ die — agin — fur — Ellenory. God bless 
her !” 

The scow, now full of water, turned upside down, and 
threw mother and child into the stream, and the child 
was gone beneath the surface before the woman could 
catch herself upon a sunken branch of an imbedded tree ; 
and, as she gasped there, the body of the pungy captain 
swept past her and she caught him by the hair, and he 
clutched her with the drowning instinct, and down they 
went together, like husband and wife, in nature’s con- 
tempt of distinctions between living worms. 

They went down to the very bottom, but not to drown ; 
for the old tree, having fallen where it grew in other years, 
was sustained upon its limbs, and made an invisible yet 
sure pathway to the shore. The long chain and the iron 
ball fettered to the colored woman’s foot, however, de- 
prived her for a few moments of all power to step along 
the slippery, submerged trunk, and, with her soul full of 
agony for her child, which she no longer saw, she was 
about to let go of her deliverer’s body and throw herself 
also into the river, to die with them, when the old scow, 
having emptied itself of the water, reappeared at the sur- 
face and struck the woman a buoyant blow that altered 
the course of her thought. 

“ Pore, brave man,” the woman gasped. “ He’s got a 


twiford’s island. 


283 

wife, maybe. He said, ‘ God bless her,’ an’ he give his 
life for a poor creature like me. God has took my baby. 
I can’t do nothing for it now, but maybe I can save this 
man’s life before I die.” 

Indifferent to her personal fate, she drew intelligence 
from her spirit of sacrifice, which is the only thing better 
than learning. She pushed the scow down and under 
Phoebus with her remaining hand, till it relieved her of 
a portion of the weight of his body, and rose up, half- 
bearing the bronze-faced sailor’s form, and animating her 
generous purpose with the honest and happy smile he 
wore upon his face, even in the vestibule of the eternal 
palace. Then, gathering the long meshes of the iron 
chain up from its termination at her feet, she threw the 
longer portion of it into the scow, so that it no longer be- 
came entangled in the cross-branches and knots below, 
and she could lift also the iron ball sufficiently to glide 
her feet along the tree. 

With pain and difficulty, lessened by self-forgetfulness, 
she pushed the scow and the body to the foot of the tree, 
and, feeling around its old roots for further support, the 
red-eyed terrapins arose and swam around her, disturbed 
in their possessions ; but she feared no reptiles any more, 
since Death, the mighty crocodile, had eaten the babe that 
she had nursed but this morning. 

She had intelligent remembrance enough to think of 
all the precautions her deliverer had taken, and, when 
she had dragged his body on the shore into the dense, 
scrubby woods, she also drew out the little scow and 
heaped some dead brush upon it, and had scarcely con- 
cealed herself when she heard voices from the river, and 
the report of a sail swung around upon its boom, and of 
feet upon a deck. The voices said : < 

“If she’s got off to Delaware, Joe Johnson won’t have 
long to stay on his visit ; for all the beaks will gather fur 
him an’ be started by John M. Clayton.” 


284 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“I’m sorry fur Joe,” answered another voice; “he 
hoped to make one more big scoop this trip, an’ quit the 
Corners fur good.” 

“ Let us sail by ole Ebenezer Johnson’s roost at Broad 
Creek mouth, an’ peep up both forks of the river,” said 
the other voice, receding ; “ it’s only a mile and a half. 
If we discover nothin’, we’ll run down the river and in* 
quire at the landings as fur as Vienny.” 

The colored woman now worked with all her strength 
to revive the insensible sailor, rolling him, rubbing his 
body till her elbows seemed almost to be dropping off*, 
and then rubbing his great, broad breast with her head 
and face and neck. She breathed into his mouth the 
breath heaven vouchsafed to Hagar as bountifully as to 
Sarah, and, wringing out portions of her garments and 
hanging them at sunny exposures to dry, she substituted 
them, in her exhausted intervals, for the wet clothing of 
the man ; and as she worked, with a hollow, desolate 
heart, she sobbed : 

“ Lord, gi’ me this man’s life ! O Lord, that took my 
chile, I will have this life back !” 

Crying and weeping, fainting and laboring, the mo- 
ments, it seemed the very hours, ran by and still he did 
not waken ; and still, with all that noble strength that 
makes the fields of white men grow and blossom under 
the negro’s unthanked toil, the widow and childless one 
fought on for this cold lump of brother nature. 

He warmed, he breathed, he groaned, he spoke ! 

His voice was like a happy sigh, as of one disturbed 
near the end of a comforting morning nap in summer : 

“You thar, Mary?” 

He stared around with difficulty, his wounded face now 
clotted and stained with blood, and his eyes next looked 
an inquiry so kind and apprehensive that she answered 
it, to save him breath : 

“ Baby’s drowned. God does best !” 


OLD CHIMNEYS. 


285 

He reached his hand to hers — she was almost naked 
to the waist, having sacrificed all she had, the greatest of 
which was modesty, to bring back that life in him which 
came naked and unashamed into the world — and he put 
his little strength into the grasp. 

“ Mary,” he exhaled, “ why didn’t you ketch the baby 
and leave me go?” 

“Oh, dearly as I loved it,” the woman answered, “I’m 
glad you come up under my hands instead. You can do 
good : you’re a white man. Baby would have only been 
a poor slave, or a free negro nobody would care for.” 

“I mean to do good, if the Lord lets me,” sighed the 
sailor; “ I mean to go and die agin for human natur at 
Johnson’s Cross-roads.” 


Chapter XXIV. 

OLD CHIMNEYS. 

The day was far advanced when Jimmy Phoebus was 
strong enough to rise and walk, and leave the refuge in 
the woods. He advised the colored woman to crawl 
through the pine-trees along the margin, while he paddled 
in the old scow in the shadow of the forest, which now 
lay strong upon the river’s breast. 

At the distance of about a mile, Broad Creek, like a 
tributary river, flowed into the Nanticoke from the east, 
fully a quarter of a mile wide, and half a mile up this 
stream an old, low, extended, weather-blackened house 
faced the river, and seemed to grin out of its broken ribs 
and hollow window-sockets like a traitor’s skull discol- 
ored upon a gibbet. It was falling to pieces, and along 
its roof-ridge a line of crows balanced and croaked, as 
if they had fine stories to tell and weird opinions to pass 
upon the former inhabitants of the tenement. 


2 86 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“There, I have hearn tell,” said Jimmy, as he drew in 
to the bank, and took the woman into the scow and began 
to tow her along the beach, wading in the water, “ there, 
I have hearn tell, lived the pirate of Broad Creek, ole 
Ebenezer Johnson, who was shot soon after the war of 
’12 at Twiford’s house down yonder.” 

“ For kidnapping free people ?” asked the woman, with- 
out interest, the question coming from her desolate heart. 

“In them days they didn’t kidnap much; it was jest 
a-beginnin’. The war of ’12 busted everything on the 
bay, burned half a dozen towns, kept the white men lay- 
in’ out an’ watchin’, and made loafers of half of ’em, an’ 
brought bad volunteers an’ militia yer to trifle with the 
porer gals, an’ some of them strangers stuck yer after the 
war was done. I don’t know whar ole Ebenezer come 
from ; some says this, an’ some that. All we know is, 
that he an’ the Hanlen gals, one of ’em Patty Cannon, 
was the head devils in an’ after the war.” 

“It’s a bad-lookin’ ole house, sir. See, yonder’s a 
coon runnin’ out of the door. Oh ! I hear my child cry- 
in’ everywhere I look.” 

“ The British begun to run the black people off in the 
war. The black people wanted to go to ’em. The Brit- 
ish filled the islands in Tangier yer with nigger camps; 
they was a goin’ to take this whole peninsuly, an’ collect 
an* drill a nigger army on it to put down Amerikey. 
When the war was done, the British sailed away from 
Chesapeake Bay with thousands of them colored folks, 
an’ then the people yer begun to hate the free niggers.” 

“ For lovin’ liberty?” the woman sighed, looking at the 
ball, which had galled her ankle bloody. 

“ They hated free niggers as if they was all Tories an’ 
didn’t love Amerikey. So, seein’ the free niggers hadn’t 
no friends, these Johnsons an’ Patty Cannon begun to 
steal ’em, by smoke ! There was only a million niggers 
in the whole country; Louisiana was a-roarin’ for ’em; 


OLD CHIMNEYS. 


287 

every nigger was wuth twenty horses or thirty yokes of 
oxen, or two good farms around yer, an’ these kidnappers 
made money like smoke, bought the lawyers, went into 
polytics, an’ got sech a high hand that they tried a mur- 
derin’ of the nigger traders from Georgey an’ down thar, 
cornin’ yer full of gold to buy free people. That give ’em 
a back-set, an’ they hung some of Patty’s band — some at 
Georgetown, some at Cambridge.” 

“If my baby’s made white in heaven, I’m afraid I 
won’t know him,” the woman said, nodding, and wander- 
ing in her mind. 

“ At last the Delawareans marched on Johnson’s Cross- 
roads an’ cleaned his Pangymonum thar out, an’ guarded 
him, and sixteen pore niggers in chains he’d kidnapped, 
to Georgetown jail. Young John*M. Clayton was paid 
by the Phildelfy Quakers to git him convicted. Johnson 
was strong in the county — we’re in it now, Sussex — an’ 
if Clayton hadn’t skeered the jury almost to death, it 
would have disagreed. He held ’em over bilin’ hell, an’ 
dipped ’em thar till the court-room was like a Methodis’ 
revival meetin’, with half that jury cryin’ ‘ Save me, save 
me, Lord !’ while some of ’em had Joe Johnson’s money 
in their pockets. Joe was licked at the post, banished 
from the state, an’ so skeered that he laid low awhile, 
goin’ off somewhar — to Missoury, or Floridey, or Ally- 
bamy. But Patty Cannon never flinched; she trained 
the young boys around yer to be her sleuth-hounds an’ 
go stealin’ for her ; an’, till she dies, it’s safer to be a 
chicken than a free nigger. They stole you, pore creat- 
ur’ from Phildelfy, an’ they steal ’em in Jersey and away 
into North Carliney; fur Joe Johnson’s a smart feller 
fur enterprise, and Patty Cannon’s deep as death an’ the 
grave.” 

Phoebus looked at the woman sitting in the scow, and 
he saw that she was fast asleep ; his tale having no power 
to startle her senses, now worn-out by every infliction. 


288 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“I must git that ball an’ chain off,” the sailor said) 
“ but iron, in these ole sandy parts, is scarce as gold.” 

He lifted her out of the scow and laid her in the shade, 
and began to explore the old house. To his joy, he found 
the iron crane still hanging in the chimney, and signs of 
recent fire. 

“These yer ole cranes was valleyble once,” Jimmy 
said, “ an’ in the wills they left ’em to their children like 
farms, an’ lawsuits was had over the bilin’ pots an’ the 
biggest kittles. It broke a woman’s heart to git a little 
kittle left her, an’ the big-kittled gal was jest pestered 
with beaux. But, by smoke ! we’re a-makin’ iron now in 
Amerikey ! Kittles is cheap, and that’s why this crane 
is left by robbers an’ gypsies after they used it.” 

He twisted the crane out of the bricks on which it 
was hinged, and some of the mantel jamb fell down. 

“Hallo!” cried Jimmy, “what’s this a rollin’ yer? A 
shillin’, by George ! I say, by George, this time caze ole 
George the Third’s picter’s on it. Maybe thar’s more of 
’em.” 

He pulled a few bricks out of the jamb, and raked the 
hollow space inside with his hand, and brought forth a 
steel purse of English manufacture, filled with shillings 
at one ertd, and fifteen golden guineas at the other ; they 
rolled out through the decayed filigree, rusted, probably, 
by the rain percolating through the chimney, and the 
purse crumbled to iron-mould in his hand. 

“ ‘ The Lord is my shepherd,’ ” said the sailor, rever- 
ently ; “‘I shall not want. He leadeth me by the still 
waters.’ How beautiful Ellenory says it. Look thar at 
the waters of the Nanticoke, beautiful as silver. Lord, 
make ’em pure waters an’ free, to every pore creatur !” 

“ To who ! to who !” screamed a voice out of the hol- 
low chimney. 

“ Well,” answered Jimmy, hardly excited, “ I ain’t par- 
tickler. Ha ! I thought I knew you, Barney,” he contin- 


OLD CHIMNEYS. 289 

ued, as an owl fluttered out and hopped up a ruined 
stairway. 

“ Now, British money ain’t coined by Uncle Sam ; 
what is the date ? I can make Aggers out easy : ‘ Eigh- 
teen hundred and fifteen !’ I was about to do Ebenezer 
Johnson the onjustice of saying that he’d sold his coun- 
try out to ole Admiral Cockburn, but the war was done 
when this money was coined. Whose was it ?” 

He removed more carefully some of the bricks, to put 
his hand in the hollow depository left there, and, feeling 
around and higher up, brought out the bronze hilt of a 
sword, on which was a name. 

“ Who would have thought this was a house of learn- 
in’ ?” Jimmy said, dubiously. “ I can’t read it. By smoke ! 
maybe they’ve murdered somebody yer. I reckon he 
was British. Ellenory kin read it, if I live to see her 
agin.” 

There was nothing more, and, as he left the rotting old 
house, a crash and a cloud of smoke rose up behind 
him, and the chimney fell into the middle of the floor. 

With the crane’s sharp wrought-iron point and long 
leverage the pungy captain succeeded, after tedious ef- 
forts, in breaking the links of the chain and also in re- 
moving the linked cannon-ball from the woman’s foot, 
but he could not remove the iron band and link around 
her ankle. 

“God bless you !” exclaimed the woman. “It’s a sin 
to say so, but I feel as if I could fly since that dreadful 
weight is off. Oh, I want to fly, for I dreamed of my 
baby, an’ he smiled at me from heaven as if he said, ‘ I’m 
happy, mamma !*” 

“ You don’t owe me nothin’, Mary. I love a widder, 
as you air, an’ she begged me to come yer. When you 
git to Prencess Anne, whar I want you to go, find Elle- 
nory Dennis, an’ tell her I’ve seen her boy, an’ I’ll bring 
him back if I kin.” 


19 


290 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“Princess Anne? where is it?” 

“It’s, maybe, forty mile from yer, Mary; half-way be* 
tween sunrise and sunset.” 

“ Right south, sir ?” 

“That’s it. Now I’ll tell you how to git thar. Take 
this old woods road along Broad Creek and walk to Lau- 
rel, five miles ; it’s a little town on the creek. Keep in 
under the woods, but don’t lose the road, fur every foot 
of it’s dangerous to niggers. You kin git thar, maybe, 
by dark. I don’t know nobody thar, Mary, an’ I can’t 
write, fur I never learned how. But you go right to the 
house of some preacher of the Gospel, and tell him a 
lie.” 

Mary opened her eyes. 

“ I wouldn’t have you tell a lie to anybody but a good 
man,” continued PhceBus, “fur then it’s so close to the 
Lord it won’t git fur an’ pizen many, as lies always does. 
You must tell that preacher that you’re the runaway slave 
of Judge Custis of Prencess Anne, an’ you’re sorry you 
run away, an’ want to go home.” 

“ Oh, sir, you are not like my wicked husband, trying 
to sell me too?” 

“ No, Mary, bad as you’ve been used, faith’s your only 
sure friend. If you was to tell the preacher you had been 
kidnapped, he’d, maybe, be afraid to help you. They’re 
a timid set down yer on any subject concernin’ niggers; 
these preachers will help save black folks’ souls, but nev- 
er rescue their pore broken bodies. When you tell him 
you are the slave of a rich man like Judge Custis, he’ll 
jump at the chance to do the Judge a favor, an’ tell you 
that you do right to go back to your master. That’s 
whair he’s a liar, Mary — so he’ll scratch your lie off.” 

“They’ll turn me back at Princess Anne, and wont 
know me, maybe.” 

“ Not if you do this, Mary. Make them take you to 
Judge Custis’s daughter — the one that’s just been mar 


OLD CHIMNEYS. 


291 


ried. Tell her you want to speak to her privately. Then 
tell her the nigger-skinned man — I’m him — that she sent 
away with her mother, found you whar you was chained 
in the woods. Take this link of the chain to show her. 
Tell her you want to be her cook till the one that run 
away is found.” 

“ I’ll do it, sir. I’ve got no home to go to, now.” 

“ Tell her all you remember. Tell her not to tell Elle- 
nory any of my troubles. Tell her I’m a-startin’ for Pan- 
gymonum, an’, if I die, it’s nothin’ but a bachelor keepin’ 
his own solitary company. Yer’s a gold piece an’ three 
silver pieces I found, Mary, to pay your way. Good- 
bye.” 

“ Won’t you give me your knife ?” asked the woman. 

“ What fur, Mary ?” 

“ To kill myself if they kidnap me again.” 

“I have nothin’ else to fight for my life with,” said 
Phcebus. “No, you must not do that. Keep in the 
woods to Laurel.” 

She fell on the ground and kissed his knees, and bathed 
them with her tears. 

“ I do have faith, master,” she said, “ faith enough to 
be your slave.” 

“ I’d cry a little, too,” said Jimmy, twitching his eyes, as 
the woman disappeared in the forest, “ if I knowed how 
to do it ; but, by smoke ! the wind on the bay’s dried up 
my tear ponds. I’ll bury these curiosities right yer, with 
this chain and ball, and put some old bricks around ’em 
outen the chimney they come from.” 

He dug a hole with his knife, carefully cutting out a 
piece of the sod, and restoring it over the buried arti- 
cles ; and, after notching some trees to mark the place, 
he pushed in the scow again into Broad Creek, and de- 
scended the Nanticoke on the falling tide to Twiford’s 
wharf. 

Dragging the scow up the bed of a creek to conceal it, 


292 THE ENTAILED HAT. 

he discovered another boundary stone. A beach led un- 
der the cover of a sandy bluff to the river gate of Twi- 
ford’s comfortable house, and he boldly entered the lane 
and lawn, saying to himself : 

“ I reckon a feller can ask to buy one squar meal a day 
in a free country, fur I’m hungry.” 

Even in that day the house was probably seventy years 
old, roofed by an artistic shingler in lines like old lace- 
work, the short roofs over the three pretty dormers like 
laced bib-aprons, the window-casements in small checkers 
of dark glass, the roof capacious as an armadillo’s back 
or land-turtle’s ; but half of it was almost as straight as the 
walls, and the small, foreign bricks in the gables, glazed 
black and dark-red alternately, were laid by conscien- 
tious workmen, and bade fair to stand another hundred 
years, as they smoked their tidy chimney pipes from 
hearty stomachs of fireplaces below. 

Standing beneath the honey-locust tree at the lawn- 
gate, the sailor beheld an extensive prospect of the river 
Nanticoke, bending in a beautiful curve, like the rim of a 
silver salver, towards the south, the blue perspective of 
the surrounding woods fading into the azure bluffs on the 
farther shore, where, as he now identified it, the hamlet 
of Sharptown assumed the mystery and similitude of a 
city by the enchantment of distance. A large brig was 
riding up the river under the afternoon breeze, carrying 
the English flag at her spanker. The wild-fowl, flying in 
V-formed lines, like Hyads astray, flickered on the salver 
of the river like house-flies. Some fishermen distantly 
appeared, human, yet nearly stationary, as if to enliven a 
dream, and the bees in a row of hives kept murmuring 
near by, increasing the restful sense in the heart and the 
ears. 

“Why cannot human natur be happy yer, pertickler 
with its gal — some one like Ellenory?” Phoebus thought; 
“why must it git cruel an’ desperate for money, lookin’ 


OLD CHIMNEYS. 293 

out on this dancin’ water, an’ want to turn this trance into 
a Pangymonum ?” 

He crossed the lane to a squatty old structure of brick 
by the water-side, and peeped in. 

“ A still, by smoke !” he said. “ If it ain’t apple brandy 
may I forgit my compass ! No, it’s peach brandy. Well, 
anyway, it’s hot enough ; an’ this, I ’spect, is what started 
the Pangymonum.” 

He took a stout drink, and it revived his weakened sys- 
tem, and he bathed his head in its strong alcohol. He 
then returned to the lawn and walked around the house, 
peeping into the lower rooms — of which there were two 
in the main building, the kitchen being an appendage — 
but saw nobody. The porch in the rear extended the full 
width of the house, unlike the smaller shed in front, which 
only covered two doors, standing curiously side by side. 

Completely sheltered by the longer porch, Phoebus, 
looking into a window, there saw a table already set with 
a clean cloth, and bread and cold chicken, and a pitcher 
of creamy milk, with a piece of ice floating in it. On 
either side of a large fireplace at the table-side was a 
door, one open, and leading by a small winding stair to 
the floor above. A bed was also in the room, which 
looked out by one window upon the lawn and the river, 
and by the other at the farm, the corn-cribs, and the small 
barns and pound-yard. 

With a sailor’s quiet, sliding feet, Jimmy walked into 
the low hall, and a cat-bird, in a cage there, immediately 
started such a shrill series of cries that his steps were un- 
heard by himself. 

“ Nobody bein’ yer,” thought Jimmy, “ an’ the flies git- 
tin’ at the victuals, I reckon I’ll do as I would be done by.” 

So he began to eat, and soon he heard a female voice, 
very close by, sound down the stairs, as if reciting to an- 
other person. 

“ Aunt Patty says Aunt Betty’s first husband, Captain 


294 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


Twiford, was a sea-captain and a widower, and she was 
one of the beautiful Hanley girls, brought up by old Eb- 
enezer Johnson at his house across on Broad Creek ; and 
there Captain Twiford courted her, and brought her here 
to live. He died early — all my aunties’ husbands died 
early — and is buried in the vault out here behind the 
pound, where you can go in and see him in his shroud, 
lying by Aunt Betty. Her next husband, John Gillis, left 
her, and then she lived with William Russell, a negro- 
trader. Aunt Patty governed all her sisters and the 
Johnson boys, too. Oh, how I fear her when she looks at 
me sometimes with her bold, black eyes : I can’t help it.” 

Another voice, not a woman’s, yet almost as gentle, 
now seemed to ask a question ; but the cat-bird, behaving 
like a detective and a tale-bearer, made such a furious 
Screaming at seeing a stranger drinking the milk, that 
Phoebus could not hear it well. The pleasant female 
voice spoke again : 

“Yes, he was killed in the room under this, before I 
was born, Aunt Patty says ; and sometimes she likes to 
tell such dark and bloody tales, and laughs with joy to 
see me frightened at them. Aunt Betty got in debt, and 
this house and farm were sold under executions and 
bought by a Maryland man, who stole an opportunity 
when the men were away, and set his goods in the house 
and set Aunt Betty’s goods outside upon the lawn. It’s 
only a mile, or a little more, from here to Ebenezer John- 
son’s, and the news of the seizure was sent there.” 

Jimmy tore off a piece of chicken with his teeth, listen- 
ing voraciously. 

“ Did you hear anything ?” continued the voice ; “ I 
thought I did. The dogs are chained up in the smoke- 
house, and bad people are often coming here ; I will go 
turn the dogs loose.” 

“ Be dogged if you do !” Jimmy reflected. “ That’s the 
meanest cat-bird ever I see, fur now it’s shut up a-purpose.” 


OLD CHIMNEYS. 


295 


There sounded something familiar to the uninvited 
guest in the voice which seemed to delay this intention ; 
but the cat-bird, with his unaccommodating mood, broke 
right in again. Then the female continued : 

“While the men — who had come armed, expecting 
trouble — were removing Aunt Betty’s goods out of the 
room, throwing many of them out of the windows, so as 
to be themselves in sole possession, a sound was heard 
in the room below, where your meal is now ready, like a 
panther skipping and lashing his tail; and, before the 
men could breathe, old Ebenezer Johnson was up the 
stairs and laying about him. His eyes were full of mur- 
der. One man jumped right through that window and 
rolled off the porch ; another he pitched down the stairs ; 
the third was a boy, Joe King, barely grown — he lives not 
far from this house now — and Ebenezer Johnson dashed 
him down the stairs, too, and started after him. All his 
life the boy had been taught to dread that terrible man, 
and now he was in his hands, or flying before him ; and, 
as he reeled through the room below, out of the door that 
opens on the back porch, the boy’s eyes, in the agony of 
the fear of death, beheld a rifle leaning there.” 

“ Mighty good thing if it was thar now !” Jimmy in- 
wardly remarked, finishing the chicken, and still hungry. 

“ Oh, there is a noise somewhere in this house,” the 
voice exclaimed ; “ I never tell this story but it makes me 
startled at every sound. The boy, as he whirled past, 
grasped the long rifle, drew it to his shoulder, and, with a 
young volunteer’s skill — for he had been drilling to fight 
the British — he put the two balls in that old man’s brain. 
Both balls entered over the left eyebrow, and one passed 
through the head and was found in the wall ; the other 
never was found.* The lawless giant gave a trembling 

* The skull of Ebenezer Johnson can be seen at Fowler & Wells’ 
Museum, New York, with the bullet-hole through it. There, also, 
are the skulls of Patty and Betty Cannon. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


296 

motion through his frame, his eyes glazed, and he sank 
dead upon the floor without a sound — the wicked had 
ceased from troubling ! Aunt Betty, Aunt Patty, and 
Aunt Jane, three sisters shaped by him in soul, fell on 
his body and wept and almost prayed, but it was too late. 
They buried him near Aunt Betty, in the field behind the 
pound.” 

Undertaking to rise from his chair, Jimmy Phoebus 
made a loud scraping on the floor, and the table-knife 
fell with a ringing sound. 

“ Who’s there ?” cried a voice, and added, “ I knew the 
dogs ought to be loose.” 

“ Who’s there ?” also asked the other voice, with some- 
thing very familiar to Phoebus in its sounds. 

“ E-b-e-n-e-z-e-r John-son !” answered Jimmy, in his 
deepest bass tones, mentally considering that a ghost 
might carry more terror than a robber, after that tale. 

A little scream followed, and a whispered consultation, 
and then a girl’s bare feet, beautifully moulded, slowly 
descended the steep stairway, and next a slender, grace- 
ful body came into view, and finally a face, delicious as a 
ripe peach, looked once at the intruder below, and all the 
pink and bright color faded from it to see, standing there, 
where Ebenezer Johnson had given up the ghost, a stal- 
wart effigy, bandaged in white all round the head, and 
over the left eye and cheek, where the dead river-pirate 
had received his double bullet, the blood was hideously 
matted and not wholly stanched even yet. She sank 
slowly down upon the steps and saw no more. 

“ Now, if I don’t git out, the dogs will be set loose,” 
muttered Jimmy, as he disappeared up the farm-house 
lane and put the barn and pound between him and the 
house ; and scarcely had he done so when Levin Dennis 
appeared coming down the stairs, all unconscious of the 
apparition, and, finding the beautiful girl insensible, he 
raised her in his arms and stole a kiss. 


OLD CHIMNEYS. 


297 

Paying for his one act of deceit by losing the principal 
object of his quest, Jimmy Phoebus stopped a minute by 
Ebenezer Johnson’s grave. 

In a level field of deep sand — the soil here being the 
poorest in the region — and between the cattle-pound and 
the pines, which were everywhere jealous of their other 
indigenous brother, the Indian corn, an old family burial- 
lot lay under some low cedar-trees, with wild berry bushes 
growing all around. There were several little stones over 
Twifords that had died early, and a large heap of sand, 
planted with some flowers, that might have covered a fa- 
vorite horse, but which Phoebus believed was the resting- 
place of the river buccaneer ; and there was also a vault 
of brick and plaster, with the little door ajar, where pru- 
rient! 1 visitors, themselves with Saul’s own selfish curiosity 
to raise the dead, had poked and peeped about until the 
coffin lids had been drawn back and the dead pair ex- 
posed to the dry peninsular air. 

The bay captain looked in and beheld his predecessor, 
Captain Twiford, who also sailed the bay, lying in his 
shroud — not in full clothing, as men are buried now, for 
clothing was too valuable in the scanty-peopled country 
to feed it to the worms. Twiford lay shrivelled up, shroud 
and flesh making but one skin, the face of a walnut color, 
the hair complete, the teeth sound, and severe dignity un- 
relaxed by the exposure he was condemned to for his evil 
alliance with Betty Hanley. 

She also lay exposed, who had lived so shamelessly, re- 
specting not the mould of beauty God had given her, till 
now men leered to look upon her nearly kiln-dried bosom 
glued into its winding-sheet, and the glory of her hair, 
that had been handled by bantering outlaws, and in a 
rippling wave of unbleached coal covered the grinning 
coquetry of her skull. 

“ Them that mocks God shall be mocked of him,” said 
Jimmy Phoebus, closing the door and putting some of the 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


298 

scattered bricks of the vault against it. “ Now, I reckon, 
I kin git to the cross-roads by a leetle after dark.” 


Chapter XXV. 

PATTY CANNON’S. 

Phcebus passed along the side of a large, black, cy- 
press-shaded millpond, and found the boundary stone 
again, and took the angle from its northern face as a com- 
pass-point, and, proceeding in that direction, soon fell in 
with a sort of blind path hardly feasible for wheels, which 
ran almost on the line between the states of Maryland 
and Delaware, passing in sight of several of these old 
boundary stones. Not a dwelling was visible as he pro- 
ceeded, not even a clearing, not a stream except one 
mere gutter in the sand, not a man, hardly an animal or 
a bird ; the monotonous sand-pines, too low to moan, too 
thick to expand, too dry to give shade, yet grew and grew, 
like poor folks’ sandy-headed children, and kept company 
only with some scrubby oaks that had strayed that way, 
till pine-cone and acorn seemed to have bred upon each 
other, and the wild hogs disdained the progeny. 

“ Maybe I’ll git killed up yer in this Pangymonum,” 
Jimmy reflected ; “ an’ though I ’spose it don’t make no 
difference whair you plant your bones, I don’t want to 
grow up into ole pines. Good, big, preachin’ kind of 
pines, that’s a little above the world, an’ says ‘ Holy, 
rolley, melancho-ly, mind your soul-y ’—I could go into 
their sap and shats fust-rate. But to die yer an’ never be 
found in these desert wastes is pore salvage for a man 
that’s lived among the white sails of the bay, an’ loved a 
woman elegant as Ellenory.” 

It was dark, and he could hardly see his way in half 
an hour. Sometimes a crow would caw, to hear strange 


PATTY CANNON’S. 


299 


sounds go past, like an old watchman’s rattle moved one 
cog. The stars became bright, however, and the moon 
was new, and when Phoebus came to a large cleared 
opening in the pines, the lambent heavens broke forth 
and bathed the sandy fields with silver, and showed a 
large, high house at the middle of the clearing, with out- 
side chimneys, one thicker than the other, and a porch of 
two stories facing the east. 

Though not a large dwelling, it was large for those 
days and for that unfrequented region, and its roof 
seemed to Phoebus remarkably steep and long, and yet, 
while enclosing so much space, had not a single dormer 
window in it. The southern gable was turned towards 
the intruder, and in it were two small windows at the 
top, crowded between the thick chimney and the roof 
slope. The two main stories were well lighted, however, 
and the porch was enclosed at the farther end, making a 
double outside room there. No sheds, kitchens, or sta- 
bles were attached to the premises, but an old pole-well, 
like some catapult, reared its long pole at half an angle 
between the crotch of another tree. Roads, marked by 
tall worm fences, crossed at the level vista where this tall 
house presided, and a quarter of a mile beyond the cross- 
roads, to the northeast, was another house, much smaller, 
and hip-gabled, like Twiford’s, standing up a lane and 
surrounded by small stables, cribs, orchard, and garden. 

“I never ’spected to come yer,” Jimmy Phoebus ob- 
served, “ but I’ve hearn tell of this place considabul. 
The big barn-roofed house is Joe Johnston’s tavern for 
the entertainment of Georgey nigger-traders that comes 
to git his stolen goods. It’s at the cross-roads, three 
miles from Cannon’s Ferry, whar the passengers from be- 
low crosses the Nanticoke fur Easton and the north, an’ 
the stages from Cambridge by the King’s road meets ’em 
yonder at the tavern. The tavern stands in Dorchester 
County, with a tongue of Caroline reaching down in front 


3 °° 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


of it, an’ Delaware state hardly twenty yards from the 
porch. Thar ain’t a court-house within twenty miles, nor 
a town in ten, except Crotcher’s Ferry, whar every Sun- 
day mornin’ the people goin’ to church kin pick up a 
basketful of ears, eyes, noses, fingers, an’ hair bit off a- 
fightin’ on Saturday afternoon. They call the country 
around Crotcher’s, Wire Neck, caze no neck is left thar 
that kin be twisted off; the country in lower Car’line 
they calls ‘ Puckem,’ caze the crops is so puckered up. 
They say Joe’s a great man among his neighbors, an’ 
kin go to the Legislater. The t’other house out in the 
fields is Patty Cannon’s own, whar she did all her dev- 
’lishness fur twenty years, till Joe got rich enough to build 
his palace.” 

With the rapid execution of a man who only plans with 
his feet and hands, the bay sailor observed that there was 
a grove of good high timber — oaks and pines — only a few 
rods from the cross-roads and to the right, under cover 
of which he could draw near the tavern. As he proceed- 
ed to gain its shade, he heard extraordinary sounds of 
turbulence from the front of the tavern, the yelling of 
men, the baying of hounds, oaths and laughter, and, list- 
ening as he crossed the intervening space, he fell into a 
ditch inadvertently, almost at the edge of the timber. 

“Hallo!” cried Jimmy, lying quite still to draw his 
breath, since the ditch was now perfectly dry, “ this ditch 
seems to me to pint right for that tavern.” 

He therefore crawled along its dry bed till it crossed 
under a road by a wooden culvert or little bridge of a few 
planks. 

The noise at the tavern was now like a fight, and, as 
Phoebus continued to crawl forward, he heard twenty 
voices, crying, 

“ Gouge him, Owen Daw !” “ Hit him agin, Cyrus 

James!” “Chaw him right up!” “Give ’em room, 
boys 1” 


PATTY CANNON'S. 


301 


Having crawled to what he judged the nearest point of 
concealed approach, Phoebus lost the moment to take a 
single glance only, and, drawing his old slouched hat 
down on his face to hide the bandaging, he muttered, 
“Now’s jess my time,” and crept up to the back of the 
crowd, which was all facing inwards in a circle, and did 
not perceive him. 

A fully grown man, as it seemed, was having a fight 
with a boy hardly fifteen years old ; but the boy was 
the more reckless and courageous of the two, while the 
man, with three times the boy’s strength, lacked the stom- 
ach or confidence to avail himself of it ; and, having had 
the boy down, was now being turned by the latter, amid 
shouts of “ Three to two on Owen Daw !” “ Bite his nose 
off, Owen Daw!” “Five to two that Cyrus James gits 
gouged by Owen Daw !” 

The boy with a Celtic face and supple body was full 
of zeal to merit favor and inflict injury, and, as the circle 
of vagrants and outlaws of all ages reeled and swayed to 
and fro, Phoebus, unobserved by anybody, put his head 
down among the rest and searched the faces for those of 
Levin Dennis or Joe Johnson. 

Neither was there, and the only face which arrested 
his attention was a woman’s, standing in the door of the 
enclosed space at the end of the porch, at right angles to 
the central door of the tavern, and just beside it. The 
whole building was without paint, and weather-stained, 
but the room on the porch was manifestly newer, as if it 
had been an afterthought, and its two windows revealed 
some of the crude appendages of a liquor bar, as a fire 
somewhere within flashed up and lighted it. 

By this fire the woman’s face was also revealed, and 
she was so much interested in the fight that she turned 
all parts of her countenance into the firelight, slapping 
her hands together, laughing like a man, dropping her 
oaths at the right places, and crying : 


302 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“I bet my money on little Owen Daw! Cy James 
ain’t no good, by God ! Yer’s whiskey a-plenty for Owen 
Daw if he gouges him. Give it to him, Owen Daw! Shame 
on ye, Cy James !” 

There was occasional servility and deference to this 
woman from members of the crowd, however they were 
absorbed in the fight. She was what is called a 
“ chunky” woman, short and thick, with a rosy skin, low 
but pleasing forehead, coal-black hair, a rolling way of 
swaying and moving herself, a pair of large black eyes, 
at once daring, furtive, and familiar, and a large neck and 
large breast, uniting the bull-dog and the dam, cruelty 
and full womanhood. 

Behind this woman, whom Phoebus thought to be Patty 
Cannon herself, the moonlight from the rear came through 
the door in the older and main building, shining quite 
through the house, and Phoebus saw that the rear door 
was also open and was unguarded. 

He took the first chance, therefore, of dodging around 
the corner of the bar, intending to pass around the north 
gable of the house and dart up the stairs by the unwatched 
door ; but he had barely got out of sight when a loud 
hurrah burst from the crowd as a feeble voice was heard 
crying “ Enough, enough !” followed by jeers rapidly ap- 
proaching. 

The large outside chimney, where Phoebus now was, 
had an arched cavity in it large enough to contain a man, 
being the chimney of two different rooms within, whose 
smoke, uniting higher up, ascended through one stem. 
Jnto this cavity Phoebus dodged, in time to avoid the 
beaten party to the fight, the grown man, who staggered 
blindly by towards a well, his face dripping blood, and he 
was sobbing babyishly ; but the concealed sailor heard 
him say, in a whining tone : 

“ She set him on me ; I’ll make her pay for it.” 

Several of the partisans or tormentors of this craven 


PATTY CANNON’S. 


3°3 


followed after him, and Jimmy himself fell in at the rear, 
and, instead of going with the rest towards the well, 
where the loser was bathing his face, Phoebus softly 
stepped over the low sill of the back door, the woman’s 
back being turned to him, and, as he had anticipated, a 
stairway ascended there out of a large room, which an- 
swered the purposes of parlor and hall, dining and gam- 
bling room, as Jimmy drank in at one glance, from seeing 
tables, dishes and cards, bottles and whips, arms and 
saddles. This stairway had no baluster, and was not 
safe in the dark for strangers to the house. 

Satisfying himself by an interior observation, as he had 
suspected exteriorly, that there was no cellar under John- 
son’s tavern, the sailor slipped up the stairs, intent to find 
where Judge Custis’s property and Ellenora’s wayward 
son had been concealed. The second story had a hall, 
which opened only at the front of the house and upon 
the upper piazza, and four doors upon this hall indi- 
cated four bedrooms. One of them was ajar, and, peep- 
ing through, Phoebus saw, extended on a bed, oblivious 
to all the fighting and din outside, Joe Johnson the ne- 
gro-trader, his form revealed by a lamp and the open fire. 

An impulse, immediately repressed, came on the sailor, 
to draw his knife and stab Johnson to the heart, as prob- 
ably the villain who had shot him from the cat-boat. The 
negro-trader wearily turned his long length in the bed, 
and Phoebus slipped back along the hall to the only door 
besides that was not closed fast, leading into the room at 
the rear southern corner of the house. 

This door creaked loudly as it was opened, and a man 
of a bandit form and dress, who was lying on a pallet 
within, revealed by the bright moonlight streaming in at 
two windows, half roused himself as Jimmy crouched at 
the door, where a partition, as of a very large clothes- 
press, taking up fully half the room, rose between the in- 
truder and the occupant. 


3°4 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“Who’s there?” exclaimed a voice, with a slight lisp in 
it. 

Jimmy discovered that there was a low trap or door 
near the floor, opening into this remarkable closet, and he 
slipped inside and drew his knife again. The man was 
heard moving about the narrow room, and he finally 
seemed to walk out into the hall and down the stairs. 

Feeling around his closet, which was pitch dark, Phoe- 
bus found a deep indentation in it, as of a smaller closet, 
and the sound of crooning voices came from above. 

“By smoke!” Jimmy mentally exclaimed, “this big 
closet is nothin’ but a blind fur a stairway in the little 
closet to climb up to the dungeon under the big roof!” 

He stole out again and found the moonlight now 
streaming upon an empty pallet and the burly watchman 
gone, and streaming, too, upon a larger door in the closet 
opposite the indentation he had felt, this door secured 
by a padlock through a staple fastening an iron bar. 
The key was in the padlock, and Jimmy turned it back, 
drew off the lock and dropped the bar. 

The moment he opened the door an almost insupporta- 
ble smell came down a shallow hatchway within, up which 
leaned a rough step-ladder, movable, and of stout con- 
struction. 

“That smell,” said Phoebus, entering, and pulling the 
door close behind him, “ might be wool, or camel, or a 
moral menagerie from the royal gardings of Europe, but 
I guess it’s Nigger.” 

He went up the steep steps with some difficulty, as 
they were made to pass only one person, and at the top 
he entered a large garret, divided into two by a heavy 
partition of yellow pine, with a door at the middle of it, 
and from beyond this partition came the sounds of croon- 
ing and babbling he had heard. 

The bright night, shining through a small gable win- • 
dow, revealed this outer half of the garret empty, and no 


PATTY CANNON’S. 


305 

furniture or other appurtenance than the hole in the floor 
up which he had come, and the door into the place of 
wailing beyond, which was fastened by a long iron spike 
dropping into a staple that overshot a heavy wooden bar. 
As he slipped up the spike and took the bar off, Phoebus 
heard some person in the room below mutter, and lock 
the great padlock upon the other door, effectually barring 
his escape by that egress. 

“We must take things as they come,” thought Jimmy, 
grimly, “ partickler in Pangymonum, whar I am now.” 

He also reflected that the arrangements of this kidnap- 
pers’ pen, simple as they seemed, were quite sufficient. 
If authority should demand to search the house, the 
double clothes-press below, with the ladder pulled up into 
the loft, became a harmless closet hung with wardrobe 
matters, and the inner closet a storeroom for articles of 
bulk ; and no human being could either go up or come 
down without passing two inhabited floors and three dif- 
ferent doors, besides the door to the slave-pen. 

This last door Phoebus now threw open and walked 
into the pen itself, stooping his head to avoid the low en- 
trance. 

For some minutes he could not see the contents at all 
in the total darkness that prevailed, as there was no win- 
dow whatever in this pen or den, but he heard various 
voices, and inhaled the strong, close air of many African 
breaths exhausting the supply of oxygen, and knew that 
chains and irons were being moved against the boards of 
the floor. 

“ Thair ain’t nothin’ to do yer,” Jimmy remarked, soft- 
ly, “but jess squat down an’ git a-climated, as they say 
about strangers to our bilious shore, an’ git your eyeballs 
tuned to the dark. But I should say that this was both 
hokey-pokey an’ Pangymonum, by smoke !” 

A man in some part of the den was praying in a highly 
nervous, excited way, slobbering out his agonizing sen- 
20 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


3 °6 

tences, and dwelling hard upon his more open vowels, 
and keeping several other inmates in sympathy or equal 
misery, as they piped in answer to his apostrophes : 

“Lawd, d e-scen’! Zte-scen’, O my Lawd. I will not let 
dee go ; no, oh my Lawd ! Come, save me ! Yes, my 
Lawd ! Come walkin’ on de waters ! Come outen Laza- 
rus’s tomb ! Come on de chario’f fire ! Come in de 
power ! De-scen’ now, O my Lawd !” 

Phoebus’s entrance made no excitement, and he crouch- 
ed down to await the strengthening of his eyes to see 
around him. The place appeared to be nearly twenty- 
five feet square, and was cross-boarded both the gable 
way and under the sloping roof, whose eaves were planked 
up a foot or two above the floor ; in the middle any man 
could stand upright and scarcely touch the ridge beam 
with his hands, but along the sloping sides could barely 
sit upright. 

The man still continuing to express his absolute sub- 
jection of spirit in a frenzy of words, and several little 
children crying and shouting responsively, Phoebus or- 
dered the man to cease, after asking him kindly to do so 
several times ; and the command being disobeyed, he 
slapped the praying one with his open hand, and the 
poor wretch rolled over in a kind of feeble fit. 

A little child somewhere continuing to cry, Phoebus 
took it in his arms and held between it and the starlight, 
at the half-open door, one of the shillings he had obtained 
from the old cabin on Broad Creek a few hours before. 
The child, seeing something shine, seized it and held fast, 
and Phoebus next passed his hand over the face of a 
sleeping man, who was snoring calmly and strenuously 
on the floor beside him. He made room for the faint 
light to shine upon the sleeper’s black face, and exclaimed, 
in a moment : 

“ If it ain’t Samson Hat I hope I may be swallered by 
a whale !” 


PATTY CANNON’S. 


307 

Calling his name, “ Samson ! Samson !” Phoebus ob- 
served a most dejected mulatto person, who had been 
lying back in the shadows, crawl forward, rattling his 
manacles. This man, when spoken to, replied with such 
refinement and accuracy, however his face betokened 
great inward misery, that the sailor took as careful a sur- 
vey of him as the moonlight permitted, coming in by that 
one lean attic window. He was a man who had shaved 
himself only recently, and his dark, curling side-whiskers 
and clean lips, and the tuft of goatee in the hollow of his 
chin, and intelligent, high forehead, seemed altogether out 
of place in this darksome eyrie of the sad and friendless. 

“ Is he your friend, sir ?” asked this man, turning tow- 
ards Samson. “ He must have a good conscience if he 
is, for he slept soon after he was brought here, and has 
never uttered a single complaint.” 

“ And you have, I reckon ?” said the waterman. 

“ Oh, yes, sir ; I have been treated with such ingrati- 
tude. It would break any gentleman’s heart to hear my 
tale. Who is your friend, sir ?” 

“Samson, wake up, old bruiser!” cried Phoebus, shak- 
ing the sleeper soundly; “you didn’t give in to one or 
two, by smoke !” 

“ Is it you, Jimmy ?” the old negro finally said, with a 
sheepish expression ; “ why, neighbor, I’m glad to see you, 
but I’m sorry, too. A black man dey don’t want to kill 
yer, caze dey kin sell him, but a white man like you dey 
don’t want to keep, and dey dassn’t let him go.” 

“ A white man here ?” exclaimed the superior-looking 
person ; “ what can they mean ?” 

“I’m ironed so heavy, Jimmy,” continued Samson, 
“ dat I can’t set up much. My han’s is tied togedder wid 
cord, my feet’s in an iron clevis, and a ball’s chained to 
de clevis.” 

“Give me your hands,” exclaimed Jimmy; “I’ll settle 
them cords, by smoke !” 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


3°8 

In a minute he had severed the cords at the wrist, and 
the intelligent yellow man pleaded that a similar favor be 
done for him, to which the sailor acceded ungrudgingly. 

“Jimmy,” said Samson, “if it’s ever known in Prencess 
Anne — as I ’spect it never will be, fur we’re in bad hands, 
neighbor — dar’ll be a laugh instid of a cry, fur ole box- 
in’ Samson, dat was kidnapped an’ fetched to jail by a 
woman !” 

“ You licked by a woman, Samson ?” 

“ Yes, Jimmy, a woman all by herseff frowed me down, 
tied my hands an’ feet, an’ brought me to dis garret. I 
hain’t seen nobody but her an’ dese yer people, sence I 
was tuk.” 

“Ha!” exclaimed the dejected mulatto, “that’s a fa- 
vorite feat of Patty Cannon. She is the only woman 
ever seen at a threshing-floor who can stand in a half- 
bushel measure and lift five bushels of grain at once upon 
her shoulders, weighing three hundred pounds.” 

“ I ain’t half dat,” Samson smiled, quietly, “ an’ she 
handled me, shore enough. You remember, Jimmy, when 
I leff you by ole Spring Hill church, to go an’ git a wom- 
an on a little wagon to show me de way to Laurel ?” 

“ Why, it was only yisterday, Samson !” 

“Dat was de woman, Jimmy. She was a chunky, 
heavy-sot woman, right purty to look at, an’ maybe fifty 
year ole. She was de nicest woman mos’ ever I see. 
She made me git off my mule an’ ride in de wagon by 
her, an’ take a drink of her own applejack — she said she 
’Stilled it on her farm. She said she knowed Judge Cus- 
tis, an’ asked me questions about Prencess Anne, an’ 
wanted me to work fur her some way. We was goin’ 
froo a pore, pine country, a heap wuss dan Hardship, whar 
Marster Milburn come outen, an’ hadn’t seen nobody on 
de road till we come to a run she said was named de 
Tussocky branch, whar she got out of de wagon to water 
her hoss. At dat place she come up to me an’ says, 


PATTY CANNON^. 


309 


* Samson, I’ll wrastle you !’ ‘ Go long,’ says I, ‘ I kin’t 

wrastle no woman like you.’ ‘ You got to,’ she says, 
swearin’ like a man, an’ takin’ holt of me jess like a man 
wrastles. I felt ashamed, an’ didn’t know what to do, 
and, befo’ I could wink, Jimmy, dat woman had give me 
de trip an’ shoved me wid a blow like de kick of an ox, 
and was a-top of my back wid a knee like iron pinnin’ of 
me down.” 

“ The awful huzzy of Pangymonum !” 

“ De fust idee I had was dat she was a man dressed 
up like a woman. I started like lightnin’ to jump up, an’ 
my legs caught each oder ; she had carried de cord to tie 
me under her gown, an’ clued it aroun’ me in a minute. 
As I run at her an’ fell hard, she drew de runnin’ knot 
tight an’ danced aroun’ me like a fat witch, windin’ me 
all up in de rope. De sweat started from my head, I 
yelled an’ fought an’ fell agin, an’, as I laid with my 
tongue out like a calf in de butcher’s cart, she whispered 
to me, ‘ Maybe you’re de las’ nigger ole Patty Cannon’ll 
ever tie !’ 

“ At dat name I jess prayed to de Lord, but it was too 
late. She put me in de cart an’ gagged me so I couldn’t 
say a word, and blood came outen my mouth. I heard 
her talkin’ to people as we passed by a town an’ over a 
bridge. Nobody looked in de cart whar I laid kivered 
over, till we come to a ferry in de night, an’ dar we passed 
over, and I heard her talkin’ to a man on dis side of de 
ferry. He come to de side of de wagon an’ peeped at 
me, layin’ helpless dar, my eyes jess a-prayin’ to him — and 
he had an elegant eye in his head, Jimmy. He says soft- 
ly to hisself, ‘ Dis is no consignment, manifes’ly, to Isaac 
an’ Jacob Cannon,’ an’ he kivered me up again, an’ the 
woman fetched me yer, put on de irons, and shoved me 
into dis hole in de garret.” 

“ I reckon that was Isaac Cannon, t’other Levite that 
never sees anything that ain’t in his quoshint.” 


3io 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ How’s the purty gals, Jimmy? I shall see ’em in my 
dreams, I ’spect, if I am sold Souf. I ain’t got long to 
stay, nohow, Jimmy, fur I’m mos’ sixty. If you ever git 
out, tell my marster to buy dat gal Virgie, an’ make her 
free. She ain’t fit to be a slave.” 

“ Gals has their place,” said Phoebus, “ but not whair 
men has to fight for liberty. How many fighting men are 
we here ?” 

“ I ’spect you’s de only one, Jimmy ; we’s all chained 
up ; dese nigger-dealers is all blacksmifs an’ keeps balls, 
hobbles, gripes, an’ clevises, an’ loads us wid iron.” 

“ Who is that woman back yonder so quare an’ still ?” 

“Why, Jimmy, don’t you know Aunt Hominy, Jedge 
Custis’s ole cook? Dey brought her in dis mornin’ wi’ 
two little children outen Teackle Hall kitchen ; one of 
dem you give dat silver to — little Ned. Hominy ain’t 
said a word sence she come.” 

Jimmy Phoebus went back to the corner of the den 
where the old woman cowered, and called her name in 
many different accents and with kind assurances : 

“Hominy, ole woman, don’t you know Ellenory’s Jim- 
my? Jedge Custis is cornin’ for you, aunty. I’m yer to 
take you home.” 

She did not speak at all, and Phoebus lifted her with- 
out resistance nearer to the moonlight. Her lips mum- 
bled unintelligibly, her eyes were dull, she did not seem 
to know them. 

Samson crawled forward, and also called her name 
kindly : 

“ Aunt Hominy, Miss Vesty’s sent fur you. Dis yer is 
Jimmy Phoebus.” 

The little boy Ned now spoke up : 

“Aunt Hominy ain’t spoke sence dat Quaker man 
killed little Phillis.” 

“Jimmy,” solemnly whispered Samson, “Aunt Hom- 
iny’s lost her mind.” 


PATTY CANNON’S. 


311 


“Yes,” spoke up the dejected and elegant mulatto 
prisoner, “ she’s become an idiot. They sometimes take 
it that way.” 

Phoebus bent his face close down to the poor old creat- 
ure’s, sitting there in her checkered turban and silver ear- 
rings, clean and tidy as servants of the olden time, and 
he studied her vacant countenance, her tenantless eyes, 
her lips moving without connection or relevance, and felt 
that cruelty had inflicted its last miraculous injury — 
whipped out her mind from its venerable residence, and 
left her body yet to suffer the pains of life without the un- 
derstanding of them. 

“ Oh, shame ! shame !” cried the sailor, tears finally 
falling from his eyes, “ to deceive and steal this pore, be- 
lievin’ intelleck ! To rob the cook of the little tin cup 
full o’ brains she uses to git food fur bad an’ fur good 
folks ! Why, the devils in Pangymonum wouldn’t treat 
that a way the kind heart that briled fur ’em.” 

“ De long man said he was Quaker man,” exclaimed 
Vince, the larger boy, “ an’ he come to take Hominy to 
de free country. Hominy was sold, she said, an’ must 
go. De long man had a boat — Mars Dennis’s boat — an’ 
in de night little Phillis woke up an’ cried. Nobody 
couldn’t stop her. De long man picked little Phillis up 
by de leg an’ mashed her skull in agin de flo’. Aunt 
Hominy ain’t never spoke no mo’.” 

“ Did you hear the long man speak after that, Vince?” 

“ Yes, mars’r. I heerd de long man tell Mars Dennis 
dat if he didn’t steer de boat an’ shet his mouf, he’d 
shoot him. I heerd de pistol go off, but Mars Dennis 
wasn’t killed, fur I saw him steerin’ afterwards.” 

“Thank God!” spoke the sailor, kissing the child. 
“ Ellenory’s boy was innocent, by smoke ! That nigger- 
trader shot me an’ threatened Levin’s life if he listened 
to me hailing of him. The noise I heard was the murder 
of the baby, whose cries betrayed the coming of the ves- 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


312 

sel. Samson, thar’s been treachery ever sence we left 
Salisbury, an’ that nigger Dave’s a part of it.” 

“ He said he hated me caze I larned him to box. 
Maybe my fightin’s been my punishment, Jimmy, but I 
never struck a man a foul blow.” 

“ And what was your hokey-pokey ?” the pungy captain 
cried to the man who had been making so much religious 
din. “ Did they sell you fur never knowin’ whar to stop 
a good thing?” 

The man hoarsely explained, himself interested by the 
disclosures and fraternity around him : 

“ I was slave to a local preacher in Delaware, an’ de 
sexton of de church. It was ole Barrett’s chapel, up yer 
between Dover an’ Murderkill — de church whar Bishop 
Coke an’ Francis Asbury fust met on de pulpit stairs. 
My marster an’ me was boff members of it, but he loved 
money bad, an’ I was to be free when I got to be twenty- 
five years ole, accordin’ to de will of his Quaker fader, 
dat left me to him. Las’ Sunday night dey had a long 
class-meetin’ dar, an’ when nobody was leff in de church 
but my marster an’ me, he says to me, ‘ Rodney, le’s you 
an’ me have one more prayer togedder befo’ you put out 
dat las’ lamp. You pray, Rodney !’ I knelt an’ prayed 
for marster after I must leave him to be free next year, 
an’, while I was prayin’ loud, people crept in de church 
an’ tied me, and marster was gone.” 

“ He sold you fur life to them kidnappers, boy, becaze 
you was goin’ to be free next year. Don’t your Bible tell 
you to watch art pray ?” 

“ Yes, marster.” 

“ Well, then, boys, it’s all watch to-night and no more 
praying,” cried Jimmy Phoebus, cheerily. “ Here are four 
men, loving liberty, bound to have it or die. Thar’s one 
of ’em with a knife, an’ the first kidnapper that crosses 
that sill, man or woman — fur we’ll trust no more women, 
Samson— gits the knife to the hilt! The blessed light 


PATTY CANNON’S. 


313 

that shone onto Calvary an’ Bunker Hill is a gleamin’ on 
the blade. Work off your irons, if you kin ; I’ll git you 
rafters outen this roof to jab with if you can’t do no bet- 
ter. Are you all with me ?” 

“ I am, Jimmy,” answered Samson, quietly. 

“I’ll die with ye, too,” exclaimed the praying man, with 
rekindled spirit. 

“ We will all be murdered, gentlemen,” protested the 
dejected mulatto. “ I know these desperate people.” 

“ Then you crawl over in the corner,” Phoebus com- 
manded, “ and see three men fight fur you. We don’t 
want any fine buck nigger to spile his beauty for us.” 

The man crawled back into the blackness of the den 
again, and Phoebus began to search the open half of the 
garret for implements of war. He found two long pieces 
of chain, with which determined men might beat out an 
adversary’s brains. 

“ Now, boys,” Jimmy delivered himself, “ I hain’t lost 
my head yisterday nor to-day neither, by smoke ! I’m 
goin’ to kill the first person that comes yer, an’ git the 
keys of this den from him, an’ lock all of you in fast, an’ 
the dead kidnapper, too. Then they won’t git at you to 
ship you off till I kin git to Seaford, over yer in Delaware 
— it’s not more than six mile — whar I know three cap- 
tains of pungies, and all of ’em’s in port thar now — all 
friends of Jimmy Phoebus, all well armed, and their crews 
enough to handle Pangymonum !” 

A noise was heard at the lock of the lower door, and 
Phoebus slipped into the enclosed den and took his sta- 
tion just within the door. 

“Remember,” he whispered, “I open the fight.” 

The lock snapped at the door below the step-ladder, 
the bolt fell, and the light of a lamp flashed up the hatch- 
way and upon the naked roof, and through the cracks of 
the boarded garret pen. 

The sailor’s knife was in his belt-pouch, where he car- 


314 the entailed hat. 

ried it over the hip. As he leaned down to look through 
a crack in the low door, he felt a hand from the gloom 
behind touch him. 

Instinctively he felt for his knife, and it was gone. 

“ Captain,” cried the voice of the dejected mulatto, as 
the door of the pen flew open and the bandit-looking 
stranger appeared with the lamp, “ there’s a white man 
here going to kill you. I’ve taken his knife from him 
and saved your life. It’s a rebellion, captain !” 

“ Help ! Patty ! Joe !” cried the man, with a loud voice, 
as Jimmy Phcebus threw himself upon him and extin- 
guished the lamp, and the two powerful men rolled on the 
floor together in a grip of mortal combat. 

Phcebus was a man of great power, but his antagonist 
was strong and slippery, too, and a spirited rough-and- 
tumble fighter. 

The pungy captain was on top, the bandit man locked 
him fast in his arms and legs, and tried to stab him in 
the side, as Phoebus felt the handle of a clasp-knife, which 
seemed slow to obey its spring, strike him repeatedly all 
round the groin, in strokes that would have killed, inflict- 
ed by the blade. 

Phcebus attempted to drag the man to the hatch- 
way and force him down it, while the two negro assist- 
ants of Phcebus beat down the negro traitor with their 
chains, and searched him vainly for the knife he had 
filched. 

At last Phoebus prevailed, and his antagonist rolled 
down the open hatchway, seven feet or more, still keep- 
ing his desperate hold on Phoebus, and dragging him 
along; and both might have cracked their skulls but for 
a woman just in the act of hurrying up the ladder, against 
whom their two bodies pitched and were cushioned upon 
her. 

The shock, however, stunned both of them, and when 
Phoebus recollected himself he was tied hand and foot 


PATTY CANNON’S. 


3 r 5 

and lying on the garret floor again, and over him stood 
Joe Johnson, flourishing a cowhide. 

The bandages had again been torn from Phoebus’s 
face, and he was bleeding at the flesh-wound in his cheek, 
and breathless from his conflict. A woman had dashed 
a vessel of water into his face, and this had revived him. 

The other man, called “captain,” had, meantime, by 
the aid of this woman — the same Phoebus had seen down- 
stairs — subdued and tied the black insurgents, and both 
of them were flourishing their whips over the backs and 
heads of the prisoners, big and little, so that the garret 
was no slight reflection of the place of eternal torment, 
as the shadows of the monsters, under the weak light, 
whipped and danced against the beams and shingles, and 
shrieks and shouts of “ Mercy !” blended in hideous dis- 
sonance. 

The woman now turned her lamp on the sailor’s rough, 
swarthy, injured countenance,, and looked him over out 
of her dark, bold eyes : 

“ Joe, this is a nigger, by God !” 

Johnson and the captain also examined him carefully, 
and, uttering an oath, the former kicked the prostrate man 
with his heavy boot. 

“ I popped this bloke last night,” he said, “and thought 
the scold’s cure had him. He’s a sea-crab playin’ the 
setter fur niggers. He sang beef to me in Princess Anne. 
I told him thar he’d pass for a nigger, Patty, and we’ll 
sell him fur one to Georgey !” 

“ All’s fish that comes to our net, Joe,” the woman 
chuckled ; “he’ll sell high, too.” 

“ That white man,” spoke the voice of Samson, within 
the pen, his chains rattling, “ has hunderds of friends a- 
lookin’ fur him, an’ you’ll ketch it if you don’t let him 
off.” 

“What latitat chants there?” Joe Johnson demanded 
of Patty Cannon. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


316 

“ That’s my nigger, Joe,” the woman answered. 

“Fetch him to the light.” 

The captain propped Samson up, and Joe Johnson 
glared into his face, and then struck him down with the 
handle of his heavy whip. 

“ Patty,” he growled, “ that nigger’s scienced ; he’s the 
champion scrapper of Somerset. He knocked me down, 
and I marked him fur it; and now, by God ! I’m a-goin’ 
to burn him alive on Twiford’s island.” 

He swore an oath, half blasphemous, half blackguard, 
and the captain murmured, with a lisp : 

“ The white man is the only witness. Make sure of 
him !” 

Irons were produced, and the captain speedily fastened 
Phoebus’s hands in a clevis, and hobbled his feet, and 
placed him, without brutality, in the pen, and, further, 
chained him there to a ring in the joist below. As the 
door was closed and bolted, a voice from the darkness of 
the pen cried out : 

“ Aunt Patty, let me out : I saved the captain’s life ; I 
took the white man’s knife. I’ll serve you faithfully if 
you only let me go.” 

“ He blowed the gab,” said Joe Johnson, “ but it won’t 
serve him.” 

“ Zeke,” cried the woman, “ it’s no use. You go to 
Georgey with the next gang — you an’ the white nigger 
thar.” 

The man threw himself upon the floor and moaned 
and prayed, as the lamplight disappeared and the hatch- 
way slid echoingly over the stairs, and the lower bolts 
were drawn. As he lay there in horror and amid con- 
tempt, a voice arrested his ears near by, singing, with 
musical and easy spirit, so low that it seemed a hymn 
from the roads and fields far down beneath : 

“ Deep-en de woun’ dy hands have made 
In dis weak, helpless soul,” 


PATTY CANNON'S. 


3 1 7 


The man listened with awe and silence, as if a spirit 
hummed the tune, and forgot his doom of slavery a mo- 
ment in the deeper anguish of a treacherous heart that 
simple hymn bestirred. It was only Jimmy Phoebus, 
thinking what he could say to punish this double traitor 
most, who had turned his back upon his race and upon 
gratitude, and Jimmy had remembered the poor woman 
chained to the tree on Twiford’s island, and her oft-reit- 
erated hymn ; and the conclusion was flashed upon his 
mind that the mulatto wretch who decoyed her away and 
sold her was none other than his renegade fellow-pris- 
oner, in turn made merchandise of because too danger- 
ous to set at large in the probable hue-and-cry for her. 

“ Poor Mary !” Phoebus slowly spoke, in his deepest 
tones, with solemn cadence. 

The wretched man listened and trembled. 

“Mary’s sperrit’s callin’ ‘Zeke !’ ” Phoebus continued, 
awful in his inflection. 

The miserable procurer’s heart stopped at the words, 
and his eyeballs turned in torment. 

“ Come, Zeke ! poor Mary’s a-waitin’ for ye !” cried 
the sailor, suddenly, in a voice of thunder, and as sud- 
denly relapsed into the low singing of the quiet hymn 
again : 

“ Deep-en de woun’ dy hands have made 
In dis weak, helpless soul, 

Till mercy, wid its mighty aid 
De-scen to make me whole ; 

Yes, Lord ! 

De-scen to make me whole.” 

The elegant Iscariot, at the thunder of the invocation, 
had reached into a place between two of the cypress 
shingles in the roof, where he had hidden the sailor’s 
knife, the blade being pressed out of sight, and only the 
handle within his grasp. It had been overlooked in the 
exciting scenes cf the previous few minutes, and now re- 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


318 

curred to his mind, as superstitious passions rolled like 
dreadful meteors across the black and hopeless chasm of 
his despairing soul. 

When the low drone of the hymn he had heard his vic- 
tim sing to her baby, when her faith in him was pure and 
childlike, crossed his maddened ears again, he raised one 
shriek of “ Mercy !” to which no answer fell, and drew 
the blade across his throat and fell dead in the kidnap- 
pers’ den. 


Chapter XXVI. 

VAN DORN. 

A thin fur of frost was on the level farm-lands, and 
the saffron and orange leaves were falling almost audibly 
from the trees, as Levin Dennis awoke on Wednesday, 
in the long, low house standing back in the fields from 
Johnson’s cross-roads, and drank in the cool, stimulating 
morn, the sun already having made his first relay, and 
his postilion horn was blowing from the old tavern that 
reared its form so broadly and yet so steeply in plain 
sight. 

Levin had been brought up from Twiford’s wharf the 
night before by the pretty maid whom Jimmy Phoebus 
had so much frightened, and this was his first day of rest- 
ful feeling, having slept off the liquor fumes of Sunday, 
the exciting watches of Monday, and the mingled pleas- 
ure and pain, illness and interest, love and remorse, of 
Tuesday. 

He had felt already the earliest twinges of youthful 
fondness for the young girl he had spent the day with at 
Twiford’s, while lying sick there from a disordered stomach 
and nervous system, and her amiability and charms, more 
than the temptation of unhallowed money, had changed 


VAN DORN. 319 

his purpose to escape at Twiford’s and give information 
of the injury inflicted upon Judge Custis’s property. 

It hardly seemed real that he had been an accessory to 
a felony and a witness to a murder — the stealing of a gen- 
tleman’s domestic slaves and the braining of the smallest 
and most helpless of them, nearly in his sight ; yet so it 
had happened, and he felt the danger he was in, but hes- 
itated how to act. He had accepted the money of the 
trader, and passed his mother’s noblest friend on the 
river without recognition, while a dastardly ball had prob- 
ably ended poor Phoebus’s career. To all these deeds he 
was the only white witness, the only one on whose testi- 
mony redress could be meted out. 

He felt, therefore, that he was a prisoner, and his life 
dependent on his cordial relations with the bloody negro- 
dealer and his band ; and Johnson had reiterated his 
promise that if Levin joined them in equal fraternity he 
should make money fast and become a plantation pro- 
prietor. 

This night coming, a raid on free negroes in Delaware 
was to be made by the band in force, and Levin had 
been told that he must be one of the kidnappers, and 
his frank co-operation that night would forever relieve 
him of any suspicions of defection and bad faith. 

“ Steal one nigger, Levin,” Joe Johnson had said, 
“ and then if ever caught in the hock you never can 
snickle !” 

Levin interpreted this thieves’ language to mean that 
he must do a crime to get the kidnappers’ confidence. 

The power of this band he had divined a little of when, 
at points along the river, especially about Vienna, there 
had been mysterious intercourse between Joe Johnson 
and people on the shore, carried on in imitations of ani- 
mal sounds; and the negro ferryman at that old Dor- 
chester village had spoken with Johnson only half an 
hour before the trader’s encounter with Jimmy Phoebus 


320 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


in mid-stream, whereupon the grim passenger, had pro- 
duced his pistol and notified Levin : 

“Now, my feller prig, honor’s what I expect from you, 
and, to remind you of it, Levin, I’m a-goin’ to pint this 
barking-iron at your mummer, so that if you patter a 
cackle, a blue plum will go right down your throat.” 

He had then tried to evade some one expected on the 
river, and, in a fit of rage at the awakening and wailing 
of the child, had hushed it forever, and then had shot 
Phoebus down. 

Poor Hominy had sincerely believed that Johnson’s 
peculiar slang was the language of the good Quakers, fol- 
lowers of Elias Hicks, who sheltered runaway slaves and 
spoke a “ thee ” and “ thou ” and “ verily, ” and that strange 
misapprehension in her ignorant mind the keen dealer 
had made use of to decoy her into Levin’s vessel and waft 
her into a distant country. 

“We didn’t steal her, Levin,” Johnson said ; “she want- 
ed to mizzle from a good master, an’ we jess sells the 
crooked moke an’ makes it squar.” 

When Aunt Hominy, having under her protecting care 
the little children, came on board the FJlenora Dennis at 
Manokin Landing, Levin had been asleep, and knew noth- 
ing of the theft till it was too late to protest, and Johnson 
himself had sailed the cat-boat into broad water. Then, 
bearing through Kedge’s Strait, he had cruised up the 
open bay, out of sight of the Somerset shore, and entered 
the Nanticoke towards night by way of Harper’s Strait, 
and run up on the night flood ; but the instinct of Jimmy 
Phoebus had cut him off at the forks of the Nanticoke, 
and propelled another crime to Johnson’s old suspected 
record. He had never been indicted yet for murder, 
though murder was thought to be none too formidable a 
crime for him. 

There was a zest of adventure in this guilty errand, 
which, but for its crime, would have pleased Levin mod- 


VAN DORN. 


321 


erately well, the roving drop in his blood expanding to this 
wild association ; and he knew but little comparatively of 
the Delaware kidnappers, reading nothing, and in those 
days little was printed about Patty Cannon’s band except 
in the distant journals like Niles's Register or Lundy's 
Genius of Emancipation. Levin had never sailed up the 
Nanticoke region before, and its scenery was agreeable 
to his sight, while his heart was just fluttering in the first 
flight of sentiment towards the interesting creature he had 
so unexpectedly and, as he thought, so strangely discov- 
ered there. 

Arriving at Twiford’s in the night, Johnson had sent 
him to bed there, and pushed on himself with the negro 
property to Johnson’s Cross-roads; and, when he awak- 
ened late the next day, Levin had found a beautiful wild- 
flower of a young woman sitting by his pallet, looking 
into his large soft eyes with her own long-lashed orbs of 
humid gray, and brushing his dark auburn ringlets with 
her hand. As he had looked up wonderingly, she had 
said to him : 

“ I have never seen a man before with his hair parted 
in the middle, but I think I have dreamed of one.” 

“ Who air you ?” Levin asked. 

“ Me ! Oh, I’m Hulda. I’m Patty Cannon’s grand- 
daughter.” 

“That wicked woman!” Levin exclaimed. “Oh, I 
can’t believe that !” 

“ Nor can I sometimes, till the sinful truth comes to 
me from her own bold lips. Oh, sir, I am not as wicked 
as she !” 

“ How kin you be wicked at all,” Levin asked, “ when 
you look so good ? I would trust your face in jail.” 

“ Would you? How happy that makes me, to be trust- 
ed by some one ! Nobody seems to trust me here. My 
mother was never kind to me. Captain Van Dorn is 
kind, but too kind ; I shrink from him.” 

21 


322 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Where is your mother now ?” 

“ She has gone south with her husband, to live in Flor- 
ida for all the rest of her life, and we are all going there 
after father gets one more drove of slaves. You are one 
of father’s men, I suppose ?” 

“ Who is your father ?” 

“ Joe Johnson.” 

“ That man,” murmured Levin. “ Oh, no, it is too 
horrible.” 

“ Do not hate me. Be a little kind, if you do, for I 
have watched you here hours, almost hoping you never 
might wake up, so beautiful and pure you looked asleep.” 

“And you — that’s the way you look, Huldy. How kin 
you look so an’ be his daughter.” 

“ I am not his child, thank God ! He is my step- 
father.” 

“What is your name, then, besides Huldy?” 

The girl blushed deeply and hesitated. Her fine gray 
eyes were turned upon her beautiful bare feet, white as 
the river that flashed beneath the window. 

“ Hulda Bruinton,” she said, swallowing a sigh. 

“Bruinton — where did I hear that name?” Levin 
asked ; “ some tale has been told me, I reckon, about 
him?” 

“Yes, everybody knows it,” Hulda said, in a voice of 
pain ; “ he was hanged for murder at Georgetown when I 
was a little child.” 

Levin could not speak for astonishment. 

“ I might as well tell you,” she said, “ for others will, if 
I conceal it. I can hardly remember my father. My 
mother soon married Joe and neglected me, and Aunt 
Patty, my grandmother, brought me up. She was kind 
to me, but, oh, how cruel she can be to others !” 

“ You talk as if you kin read, Huldy,” said Levin, wish- 
ing to change so harsh a topic ; “ kin you ?” 

“ Yes, I can read and write as well as if I had been to 


VAN DORN. 


323 

school. Some one taught me the letters around the tav- 
ern — some of the negro-dealers : I think it was Colonel 
McLane ; and I had a gift for it, I think, because I began 
to read very soon, and then Aunt Patty made me read 
books to her — oh, such dreadful books !” 

“ What wair they, Huldy ?” 

‘‘The lives of pirates and the trials of murderers — 
about Murrell’s band and the poisonings of Lucretia Chap- 
man, the execution of Thistlewood, and Captain Kidd’s 
voyages ; the last I read her was the story of Burke and 
Hare, who smothered people to death in the Canongate 
of Edinburgh last year to sell their bodies to the doc- 
tors.” 

“Must you read such things to her?” 

“ I think that is the only influence I have over her. 
Sometimes she looks so horribly at me, and mutters such 
threats, that I fear she is going to kill me, and so I hasten 
to get her favorite books and read to her the dark crimes 
of desperate men and women, and she laughs and listens 
like one hearing pleasant tales. My soul grows sick, but 
I see she is fascinated, and I read on, trying to close my 
mind to the cruel narrative.” 

“ Huldy, air you a purty devil drawin’ me outen my 
heart to ruin me ?” 

“ No, no ; oh, do not believe that ! I suppose all men 
are cruel, and all I ever knew were negro-traders, or I 
should believe you too gentle to live by that brutal work. 
I looked at you lying in this bed, and pity and love came 
over me to see you, so young and fair, entering upon this 
life of treachery and sin.” 

Levin gazed at her intently, and then raised up and 
looked around him, and peered down through the old dor- 
mers into the green yard, and the floody river hastening 
by with such nobility. 

“Air we watched?” he inquired. 

“ By none in this house. All the men are away, mak- 


324 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


ing ready for the hunt to-morrow night. The river is 
watched, and you would not be let escape very far, but in 
this house I am your jailer. Joe told me he would sell 
me if I let you get away.” 

Levin listened and looked once more ardently and 
wonderingly at her, and fell upon his knees at her uncov- 
ered feet. 

“Then, Huldy, hear me, lady with such purty eyes, — I 
must believe in ’em, wicked as all you look at has been ! 
I never stole anything in my life, nor trampled on a 
worm if I could git out of his path, — so help me my poor 
mother’s prayers ! Huldy, how shall I save myself from 
these wicked men and the laws I never broke till Sunday ? 
Oh, tell me what to do !” 

“ Do anything but commit their crimes,” she answered. 
“ Promise me you will never do that ! Let us begin, and 
be the friends I wished we might be, before I ever heard 
you speak. What is your name ?” 

“Levin — Levin Dennis. My father’s lost to me, and 
mother, too.” 

“ Then Heaven has answered my many prayers, Levin, 
to give me something to cherish and protect. I am al- 
most a woman : oh, what is my dreadful doom ? — to be- 
come a woman here among these wolves of men, who meet 
around my stepfather’s tavern to buy the blood and souls 
of people born free. Joe Johnson sells everything ; he 
has often threatened to sell me to some trader whose 
bold and wicked eyes stared at me so coarsely, and I 
have heard them talk of a price, as if I was the merchan- 
dise to be transferred — I, in whose veins every drop of 
blood is a white woman’s.” 

“ I want you to watch over me, Huldy : I’m a poor 
drunken boy, my boat chartered to Joe Johnson fur a 
week an’ paid fur. Tell me what to do, an’ I’ll do it.” 

“ First,” she said, “ you must eat something and drink 
milk— nothing stronger. Their brandy, which they ’still 


VAN DORN. 325 

themselves, sets people on fire. I will set the table for 
you.” 

It was after the table had been set that Jimmy Phoe- 
bus slipped in and devoured the milk and meat, over- 
hearing the continuance of the conversation just given ; 
and when his awkward motions had disturbed these new 
young friends, Hulda fainted on the stairs before the ap- 
parition Levin did not see, and he snatched the kiss that 
was like plucking a pale-red blossom from spme dragon’s 
garden. 

That night two horses without saddles came to bring 
them both to Johnson’s Cross-roads, and Levin awoke at 
Patty Cannon’s old residence on the neighboring farm. 

He looked out of the small window in the low roof 
upon a little garden, where a short, stout, powerfully made 
woman, barefooted, was taking up some flowers from their 
beds to put them into boxes of earth. 

“Yer, Huldy,” exclaimed this woman, “sot ’em all un- 
der the glass kivers, honey, so grandmother will have 
some flowers for her hat next winter. They wouldn’t 
know ole Patty down at Cannon’s Ferry ef she didn’t 
come with flowers in her hat.” 

A mischievous blue-jay was in a large cherry-tree, ap- 
parently domesticated there, and he occupied himself 
mimicking over the woman’s head the alternate cries of 
a little bird in terror and a hawk’s scream of victory. 

“Shet up, you thief!” spoke the woman, looking up. 
“Them blue-jays, gal, the niggers is afeard of, and kills 
’em, as Ole Nick’s eavesdroppers and tale - carriers. 
That’s why I keeps ’em round me. They’s better than a 
watch-dog to bark at strangers, and, caze they steals all 
their life, I love ’em. Blue-jay, by Ged ! is ole Pat Can- 
non’s bird.” 

“Grandma,” Hulda said, “ I wish you had a large, ele- 
gant garden. You love flowers.” 

“ Purty things I always would have,” exclaimed the 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


326 

bulldog-bodied woman, with an oath; “bright things I 
loved when I was a gal, and traded what I had away fur 
’em. Direckly I got big, I traded ugly things fur ’em, like 
niggers. I’d give a shipload of niggers fur an apern full 
of roses.” 

“ Florida, they say, is beautiful, grandma, and flowers 
are everywhere there.” 

“ Yes, gal, they says so ; but I don’t never expect to 
go thar. Margaretty, your mommy, likes it thar. Dela- 
ware’s my home ; some of ’em hates me yer, and the 
darned lawyers tries to indict me, but I’ll live on the line 
till they shoves me over it, whar I’ve been cock of the 
walk sence I was a gal.” 

As Hulda, also barefooted, but moulded like the flowers, 
so that her feet seemed natural as the naked roots, car- 
ried the boxes around to the glass beds encircling a 
chimney — dahlias, autumnal crocuses or saffrons, tri-col- 
ored chrysanthemums or gold -flowers, and the orange- 
colored marigolds — the elder woman, resting on her hoe, 
smelled the turpentine of a row of tall sunflowers and 
twisted one off and put it in her wide-brimmed Leghorn 
hat. 

“ When I hornpipe it on the tight rope,” Levin heard 
her chuckle, “ one of these yer big flowers must die with 
me.” 

She disappeared into the peach orchard, which tinted 
the garden with its pinkish boughs, and Levin improved 
the chance to look over the cottage and the landscape. 

It was a mere farm, level as a floor, part of a larger 
clearing in the primeval woods, where only fire or age had 
preyed since man was come ; and, although there seemed 
more land than belonged to this property, no other house 
could Levin see over all the prospect except the bold and 
tarnished form of Johnson’s castle, sliding its long porch 
forward at the base of that tall, blank, inexpressive roof 
which seemed suspended like the drab curtain of a thea- 


VAN DORN. 


3 2 7 

tre between the solemn chimney towers; the northern 
chimney broad and huge, and bottomed on an arch ; the 
southern chimney leaner, but erect as a perpetual sentry 
on the King’s road. 

The house where Levin Dennis now looked out was a 
three-roomed, frame, double cabin, with beds in every room 
but the kitchen, and the hip-roof gave considerable bed 
accommodation in the attic besides, the rooms being all 
small, as was general in that day. Around the house ex- 
tended a pretty garden, with some cherry and plum trees 
and wild peach along its boundaries, and the fields around 
contained many stumps, showing that the clearing had 
been made not many years before, while here and there 
some heaps of brush had been allowed to accumulate in- 
stead of being burned. 

As Levin looked at one of those brush-heaps in a low 
place, a pair of buzzards slowly and clumsily circled up 
from it, and, flying low, went round and round as if they 
might be rearing their young there and hated to go far ; 
and, for long afterwards, Levin saw them hovering high 
above the spot in parental mindfulness. 

He drew his head in the dormer casement, and was 
making ready to go down to the breakfast he smelled 
cooking below, when his own name was pronounced in 
the garden, and he stopped and listened. 

“ You lie l” exclaimed the old woman’s voice. “ I’ll 
mash you to the ground !” 

“He said so, grandma, indeed he did.” 

Levin had a peep from the depths of the garret, and he 
saw that Mrs. Cannon was standing with the hoe she had 
been using raised over Hulda’s head, while a demoniac 
expression of rage distorted her not unpleasing features. 

Levin walked at once to the window and whistled, as if 
to the bird in the tree. The older woman immediately 
dropped her hoe, and cried out to Levin : 

“ Heigh, son 1 ain’t you most a-starved fur yer break- 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


328 

fast ? It’s all ready fur ye, an’ Huldy’s waitin’ fur ye to 
come down.” 

Levin at once went down the short, winding stairs to a 
table spread in the kitchen end, and the old woman blew 
a tin horn towards Johnson’s Cross-roads, as if summon- 
ing other boarders, and then she said to Levin, with a 
very pleasing countenance : 

“ Son, these yer no-count people will be askin’ you ques- 
tions to bother you, and I don’t want no harm to come to 
you, Levin ; so you tell everybody you see yer that Levin 
Cannon is your name, and they’ll think you’s juss one o’ 
my people, and won’t ask you no more.” 

Hulda slightly raised her eyes, which Levin took to 
mean assent, and he said : 

“Cannon’s good enough for a body pore as me.” 

“You’re a-goin’ with Joe to-night, ain’t you?” 

“ Yes’m, I b’leeves so.” 

“That’s right, cousin. You’ll git rich an’ keep your 
chariot, yit. Captain Van Dorn’s gwyn to head the party. 
As Levin Cannon, ole Patty’s pore cousin, he’ll look out 
fur you, son. Now have some o’ my slappers, an’ jowl 
with eggs, an’ the best coffee from Cannon’s Ferry. Huldy, 
gal, help yer Cousin Levin ! He won’t be your sweetheart 
ef you don’t feed him good.” 

The breakfast was brought in by a white man with a 
face scratched and bitten, and one eye full of congested 
blood. 

“Cy,” Patty Cannon cried, “them slappers, I ’spect, 
you had hard work to turn with that red eye Owen Daw 
give you.” 

“ I’ll brown both sides of him yit, when I git the griddle 
ready for him,” the man exclaimed, half snivelling. 

“ Before you raise gizzard enough for that, little Owen’ll 
peck outen yer eyes, Cy, like a crow ; he’s game enough 
to tackle the gallows. You may git even with him thar, 
Cy.” 


VAN DORN. 


3 2 9 


The man turned his cowardly, serving countenance on 
Levin inquisitively, and looked sullen and ashamed at 
Hulda, who observed : 

“ Cyrus, you are not fit for the rude boys around fa- 
ther’s tavern, who always impose on you. Please don’t 
go there again.” 

“ Where else kin he go ?” inquired Patty Cannon, se- 
verely ; “thar ain’t no church left nigh yer, sence Chapel 
Branch went to rot for want of parsons’ pay. Let him go 
to the tavern and learn to fight like a man, an’ if the boys 
licks him, let him kill some of ’em. Then Joe and the 
Captain kin make somethin’ of Cy James, an’ people 
around yer’ll respect him. Why, Captain, honey, ain’t ye 
hungry ?” 

This was addressed to a man with several bruises on 
his forehead, and an enormous flaxen mustache, as soft 
in texture as a child’s hair — a man wearing delicate boots 
with high Flemish leggings, that curled over and showed 
full women’s hose of red, over which were buckled trou- 
sers of buff corduroy, covering his thighs only, and fast- 
ened above his hips by a belt of hide. His shirt was of 
blue figured stuff, and his loose, unbuttoned coat was a 
kind of sailor’s jacket of tarnished black velvet. He hung 
a broad slouched hat of a yellowish-drab color, soft, like 
all his clothing, upon a peg in the wall, and bowed to 
Hulda first with a smile of welcome, to Madame Cannon 
cavalierly, and to Levin with a graceful reserve that at- 
tracted the boy’s attention from the notorious woman at 
the head of the table, and held him interested during all 
the meal. 

“ Pretty Hulda, I salute you ! Patty, buenos dias ! I 
hope I see you well, friend !” — the last to Levin. 

As he took up his knife and fork Levin observed a 
ring, with a pure white diamond in it, flash upon the Cap- 
tain’s hand. He was a blue-eyed man, with a blush and 
a lisp at once, as of one shy, but at times he would look 


33 ° 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


straight and bold at some one of the group, and then he 
seemed to lose his delicacy and become coarse and cold. 
One such look he gave at Hulda, who bowed her eyes 
before it, and looked at him but little again. 

To Levin this man had the greatest fascination, partly 
from his extraordinary dress — like costumes Levin had 
seen at the theatre in Baltimore, where the pirates on the 
stage wore a jacket and open shirt and belt similar in cut 
though not in material — and partly from his countenance, 
in which was something very familiar to the boy, though 
he racked his memory in vain for the time and place. 
The stranger was hardly more than forty to forty-five 
years of age, but the mistress of the house treated him 
with all the blandishments of a husband. 

“ Dear Captain ! pore honey !” she said ; “ to have his 
beautiful yaller hair tored out by the nigger hawk ! Hon- 
ey, he fell onto me, and I thought a bull had butted me 
in the stummick.” 

“ He broke no limbs, Patty,” the captain lisped, feed- 
ing himself in a dainty way — and Levin observed that his 
fork was silver, and his knife was a clasp-knife with a sil- 
ver handle, that he had taken from his pocket — “ ChisJ 
chis ! if he had snapped my arm, the caravan must have 
gone without me to-night. I am sore, though, for Senor 
was a valiant wrestler.” 

“ He’ll git his pay, honey, when they sot him to work in 
Georgey an’ flog him right smart, an’ we spend the price 
of him fur punch. He, he ! lovey lad !” 

“ I took this from him to-day when I searched him 
carefully,” the captain said, handing Patty Cannon a piece 
of silver coin. 

The woman, though she looked to be little more than 
fifty years of age, drew out spectacles of silver from an old 
leather case, and putting them on, spelled out the coin : 

“ George — three — eighteen — eighteen hunderd-and-fif- 
teen 1” 


VAN DORN. 


331 


She threw up her head so quickly that the spectacles 
dropped from he*r nose, and Hulda caught them, and 
then Mrs. Cannon turned on Hulda with a ferocious ex- 
pression and snatched the spectacles from her hand. 

“Whardid the devil git it?” Patty Cannon asked. 

“ Ah ! who knows ?” the Captain lisped with pale non- 
chalance, giving one of those strong, piercing looks he 
sometimes afforded, right into the hostess’s eyes. “ It 
might be a coincidence: chis ! chito ! A shilling of a 
certain year is no rare thing. But, Madame Cannon, it 
becomes slightly curious when six such shillings, all num- 
bered with that significant year, came out of the same 
pocket !” 

With this he passed five shillings of the same appear- 
ance over to the hostess, and she put on her spectacles 
again and looked at them all, and dropped them in her 
lap with a weary yet frightened expression, and mut- 
tered : 

“ Van Dorn, who kin he be ?” 

“ That is of less consequence, my dear, than whether 
we can afford to sell him.” 

The Captain was now looking at Hulda with the same 
strong intentness, but her eyes were in her plate ; and, 
though Madame Cannon looked at her, too, with both in- 
terest and dislike, Hulda quietly ate on, unconscious of 
their regard. 

“ Shoo !” the woman said ; “ people kin scare their- 
selves every day if they mind to. We’ve got him, and, if 
he knows anything, it’s all in that nigger noddle. So 
eat and be derned !” 

“ My guardian angel,” the Captain remarked, with a 
blush and a stronger lisp, “ you may not have observed 
that I have never ceased to eat, while you immediately 
lost your appetite. What will you do with the shil- 
lings ?” 

Mrs. Cannon took them from her lap, and rose as if 


332 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


she meant to throw them out of the window, her angry 
face bearing that interpretation. 

“ Stop, remarkable woman,” the Captain said, pulling 
his soft, flaxen mustache with the diamond-flashing hand, 
“let your fecund resources stop and counsel, for I am 
only looking to your happiness, that has so abundantly 
blessed my life and banished every superstition from my 
heart, till I believe in neither ghosts, nor God, nor devil, 
while you believe in all of them, and give yourself many 
such unnecessary friends and intruders. Chito ! chito ! as 
the Cubans say, and hear my suggestion before you throw 
away those shillings !” 

“Take care how you mock me!” cried Patty Cannon, 
with her dark, bold eyes furtive, like one both angered 
and troubled, and her ruddy cheeks full of cloudy blood. 

“ Sit down ! Give the shillings to pretty Hulda there.” 

“ To her?” 

“ Ya, ya ! to pleasing Hulda ; for what will trouble us 
then, her sinless bosom being their safe depository, and 
her long-lashed eyes melting our ghosts to gray air ?” 

With a look of strong dislike, the woman gave Hulda 
the shillings, saying : 

“ If you ever show one of ’em to me, gal, I’ll make you 
swaller it.” 

Hulda took the silver pieces and looked at them a mo- 
ment with girlish delight : 

“ Oh, grandma, how kind you are ! Why do you speak 
so mad at me when you give me these pretty things ? 
They seem almost warm in my bosom as I put them 
there, like things with life. Let me kiss you for them !” 

She rose from the chair and approached the mistress 
of the house, who sat in a strange terror, not forbidding 
the embrace, yet almost shuddering as Hulda stooped 
and pressed her pure young lips to the blanched and dis- 
sipated face of Patty Cannon. 

The Captain looked at the kiss With his peculiar 


VAN DORN. 


333 


strong, cold look, and smiled at Hulda graciously and 
said : 

u There, ladies, repose in each other’s confidence ! A 
few shillings for such a kiss is shameful pay, Aunt Patty. 
Do you remember as well as I do, Madame Cannon, that 
once you missed some money, and thought your mother 
had stolen it, and hunted everywhere for it, and it never 
came to light?” 

“ Yes,” cried Patty Cannon, “I do,” and swore a man’s 
oath. 

“ Has the Senor been in that direction, do you think ? 
I think he has, for Melson and Milman are up from Twi- 
ford’s with the news that Zeke’s last hide has burst her 
chain and fled, and all the lower Nanticoke gives no trace 
of her, and Zeke has passed the heavenly gates.” 

The Captain drew the back of his silver clasp-knife 
across his throat, smilingly, and placed on the table a 
sailor’s sheath-knife. 

“ Zeke only was untied; it was a too generous omission,” 
he said. “The Philadelphia woman the Senor says he 
set free, and that she has gone to start an alarm against 
us. The Senor is a cool man : he told me that, and 
laughed and roared, and says he will live to see us all in 
a picture-frame. Ayme , ay me, Patty !” 

With her face growing longer and longer, the woman 
heard these scarcely intelligible sentences — wholly unin- 
telligible to the younger people — and to Levin it seemed 
that she grew suddenly old and yet older, till her cheeks, 
but lately blooming, seemed dead and wrinkled, and, from 
maintaining the appearance of hardly fifty, and fair at 
that, she now looked to be more than sixty years of age, 
and sad and helpless. 

“ Van Dorn, I’m dying,” she muttered, as her eyes 
glazed, and she settled down in her chair like a lump of 
dough. 

“ Ha ! O hala hala ! hands off, fair Hulda,” the Cap- 


334 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


tain cried, joyfully, as Hulda had been moved to relieve 
the poor old woman ; “ no one shall assist at these cere- 
monies of expiation but Van Dorn himself, whose rights 
in Mistress Cannon are of priority. She’s dropsical, and 
hastening to perdition too soon, which I must arrest and 
let her comfort me still more. Sweet comforter ! Young 
gentleman, you shall help me.” 

Levin took hold of Patty Cannon’s feet and found that 
she seemed made of bone, so tough were her sinews, and 
Van Dorn easily lifted her broad shoulders, and so she 
was laid on a bed in the next room, where the elegant 
Captain was seen rubbing her limbs, and even handling 
a bottle of leeches, one of which he allowed to crawl over 
the hand that wore the diamond, making it look like a 
ruby melting or in living motion. As this voracious 
blood-lover took his fill around the straight ankles of the 
hostess, the dainty Captain held her in his arms like an 
ardent lover. 

“ Honey,” sighed the woman, “ my rent is due, and 
Jake Cannon never waits. Take Huldy and this yer new 
recruit, my cousin Levin Cannon, an’ drive ’em to the 
ferry, — an’ watch that boy, Van Dorn : I want him broke 
in ! Give him a pistol and a knife, an’ have him cut 
somebody. Put the blood-mark on him and he’s ours.” 

“ Great woman !” the Captain lisped, prolific of his kiss- 
es, “ Maria Theresa ! Semiramis ! Agrippina ! Cleopatra ! 
ever fecund in great ideas and growing youthful by night- 
shade, alto ! quedo! but I love thee!” 

“ Am I young a little yit, honey ?” asked Patty Cannon. 
“Oh, don’t deceive me, Van Dorn! Can my eyes look 
love an’ hate, like old times ?” 

“Si! quiza! More and more, dark angel, entering 
into black age like torches in a cave, I see your deep 
eyes flame ; but never do they please me, Patty, as when 
they flash on some new wicked idea, like this of marking 
the boy for life. Who is he ?” 


cannon’s ferry. 


335 


“ HVs a Cannon, one of the stock that my Delaware 
man belonged to. His mother looked down on me fur 
coming in their family : I have remembered her.” 

“ You want your young cousin made a felon, then ?” 

“Yes, honey, I want him scorched, so the devil will 
know him fur his own.” 

The Captain reached down to the lady’s feet and pulled 
off the leech and held it up against his hollow palm, 
gorged with the blood of the fair patient. 

“ See, Patty ! The boy shall drink blood like this, till, 
drunk with it, he can hold on no more, and drops into 
our fate as in this vial.” 

As he spoke he let the leech fall in the bottle, where 
its reflection in the glass seemed to splash blood. 

“Ha, ha! Van Dorn, I love you!” the woman cried, 
and smothered him with caresses. 


Chapter XXVII. 
cannon’s ferry. 

When it was announced to Levin and Hulda, who had 
meantime been talking in the garden, dangerously near 
the subject of love, that they were to be given a ride to 
Cannon’s Ferry with Captain Van Dorn, at the especial 
desire of Aunt Patty Cannon — who also sent them a 
handful of half-cents to spend — they were both delight- 
ed, though Hulda said : 

“ Dear Levin, if it was only ourselves going for good, 
how happy we might be ! I could live with your beauti- 
ful mother and work for her, and, knowing me to be al- 
ways there, you would bring your money home instead of 
wasting it.” 

“Can’t we do so some way?” asked Levin. “Oh, I 
wish I had some sense ! I wish Jimmy Phoebus was yer, 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


336 

Huldy, to take me out thair in the garden an’ whip me 
like my father. But, if I hadn’t come yer, how could I 
have seen you, Huldy ?” 

“ How could I have spent such a heavenly night of 
peace and hope if you had not come, dear? The Good 
Being must have led you to me.” 

“ Huldy,” said Levin, after thinking to the range of his 
knowledge, “ maybe thar’s a post-office at Cannon’s Fer- 
ry, an’ you kin write a letter to Jack Wonnell fur me.” 

“ Why not to your mother, Levin ?” 

“Oh, I am ashamed to tell her; it would kill her.” 

“ If we should be found out, Levin, Aunt Patty would 
kill me. There is no paper here, no ink that I can get, 
the postage on a letter is almost nineteen cents, and, 
look ! these half-cents are short of the sum by just two.” 

“ I have gold,” cried Levin, thinking of the residue of 
Joe Johnson’s bounty. 

He put his hand into his pocket, but the money was 
no longer there. 

“Hush 1” cried Hulda, “you have been robbed. Ev- 
erybody is robbed who sleeps here. Grandma can smell 
gold like the rat that finds yellow cheese.” 

The individual who had served the breakfast was seen 
coming towards them, a man in size, with a low forehead, 
no chin to speak of, a long, crane neck, and a badly 
scratched and festered face. 

“ Mister,” he said to Levin, “ come help me hitch the 
horses ; I’m beat so I can’t see how.” 

Levin started at once, suggesting to Hulda to make 
search for his missing money, and, when they were in the 
little stable, the man observed, in a whisper, to Levin : 

“ By smoke !” 

Levin went on putting the bridles and breeching on the 
horses, when the man said again, with an insinuating grin : 

“ By smoke !” 

“ Heigh ?” exclaimed Levin. 


cannon’s ferry. 337 

“ By smoke !” the man remarked again, with a very ar- 
dent emphasis. 

“ You must have been in Prencess Anne,” Levin said, 
" to swar ‘ by smoke.’ ” 

The ill-raised man, with such an inferior head and 
cranish neck, now slipped around to the front of Levin 
and looked down on him, and whispered : 

“ Hokey-pokey !” 

The idea crossed Levin’s mind that the scullion of 
Patty Cannon must have gone crazy. 

“Whair did you pick up them words, Cy?” Levin 
asked. 

“ Hokey-pokey !” answered Cy James, with a more mys- 
terious and impressive sufflation ; “ Hokey-pokey ! By 
smoke ! and Pangymonum, too !” 

“ Why, Cy ! what do you mean ? Jimmy Phoebus never 
swars but in them air words. Do you know Jimmy Phoe- 
bus ?” 

“ Pangymonum, too !” hissed Cy James, with every ani- 
mation. “ Hokey-pokey, three ! an’ By smoke, one !” 

He put his long arms on his knees, and bent down 
like a great goose, and stared into Levin’s eyes. 

“I never had sense enough,” Levin said, “to guess a rid- 
dle, Cy Jeems. Them words I have hearn a good man — 
my mother’s friend — use so often that they scare me. My 
mind’s been a-thinkin’ on him night an’ day. Oh, is he 
dead?” 

“By smoke! Hokey-pokey! an’ Pangymonum, too !” 
the long, lean, excited fellow whispered, with the greatest 
solemnity. 

“They’re Jimmy Phoebus’s daily words, dear Cyrus. 
He was killed on the river night before last; I saw him 
fall ; it is my sin and misery.” 

“ He ain’t dead,” Cy James whispered, very low and 
carefully. “ I won’t tell you whar he is till you make 
Huldy like me.” 


22 


338 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ How kin I do that, Cy ?” 

“ She thinks I’m a coward and gits whipped by Owen 
Daw. Tell her I ain’t no coward. Tell her I’m goin’ to 
fry all these people on my griddle — all but Huldy. Tell 
her I’m only playin’ coward till I gets ’em all in batter 
an’ the griddle greased, an’ then I’ll be the bully of the 
Cross-roads !” 

“ Do you hate me, Cy Jeemes ? I ain’t done nothin’ to 
you. I’m a prisoner here till I kin git my boat back 
from Joe an’ go to Prencess Anne.” 

“ I won’t hate you if you kin make Huldy love me,” Cy 
James replied. “Tell her I ain’t no coward; that I’m 
goin’ to be free, an’ rich too.” He dropped his palms to 
his knees again, and whispered, “fur I know whar ole 
Patty buries her gole an’ silver !” 

“ Come with those horses, you idle lads,” the lisping 
voice of the Captain was heard to call. “ Ya , ya ! there, 
luegof the morning passes on.” 

“All ready,” Cy James replied, and as they left the 
stable door he whispered once again, and looked signifi- 
cantly towards Johnson’s Cross-roads: 

“ By smoke ! Hokey-pokey ! an’ Pangymonum, too !” 

The Captain, looking like a gentleman of the knightly 
ages misplaced in this forest lair, held the reins standing 
on the ground, and handed Hulda in to the seat beside 
his own with a grace and a blush and a lisping laugh that, 
Levin thought, were very fascinating. 

“ Now, Master Cannon, take your place in the tail of 
the vehicle,” the Captain said, bowing to Levin, and dart- 
ing one of those cold, coarse looks at him that he vouch- 
safed but for a moment, like a soft cat that has all the 
nature of the rabbit except the tiger’s glare. 

The vehicle was an old wagon without springs, and 
Levin’s seat was a piece of board, while Hulda’s had a 
back to it, and the Captain had padded it with a bear’s- 
skin robe. He looked with the most delicate attention 


cannon’s ferry. 


339 


at Hulda, blushed when she looked at him, and, scarcely 
noticing the horses, yet having them under nearly auto- 
matic control, he drove out of Patty Cannon’s lane and 
turned into the woods. 

Levin cast one long, prying look at Johnson’s tavern, 
wishing he might have the gift to see through its weather- 
stained planking and tall blank roof, and then he watched 
the road, of hard sand or piney litter, with here and there 
a mud-hole or long, puddly rut in it, unravel like a ribbon 
behind the wheels among the thick pines. 

He also observed the skill with which the Captain 
threw his long cowhide whip, a mere strip of rawhide 
fastened to a stick, awkward in other hands ; but Van 
Dorn could brush a fly from either of the short, shaggy 
Delaware horses with it, and hardly look where he struck 
or disturb the horse, and he could deliver a blow with it 
by mere sleight that made the animal stagger and trem- 
ble with the abrupt pain. 

At a little sandy rill, the only one they crossed, a long 
water-snake endeavored to escape before the rapid wagon 
could strike it, but the Captain rose to his feet quick and 
cat-like, and projected the long lash into the roadside, 
and the snake writhed and bounded in the air almost cut 
in two. Then, sitting again and bending so close to 
Hulda that his long, downy mustache of gold touched 
her cheek, Van Dorn said, softly : 

u Que hermoso ! Young wild-flower, let me take a snake 
out of your path also ?” 

“ Which one, Captain ?” 

“It does not matter. Name any one.” 

“ Alas !” said Hulda, “ I am of them ; how can I wish 
harm to my stepfather and my grand-dame ? They are 
not what I wish, but I am commanded to honor them.” 

“ By whom, fair Hulda ?” 

“By God. I read it in the Book after I heard it from 
a slave.” 


34o 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Donde estd! What slave that vve know was so God- 
read ?” 

“ Poor drunken Dave. He was a good man before he 
knew us. He told me all the Commandments for a drink 
of brandy, and I wrote them down and afterwards I found 
them in a book.” 

“Chis ! chito ! how graceful is your mind, Hulda ! It 
comes out of the absolute blank of your condition and 
discovers things, as the young osprey, untaught before, 
knows where to dive for fish. Who that ever comes to 
Johnson’s Cross-roads brings the Bible?” 

“ Colonel McLane.” 

“ He ? the self-righteous crocodile ! he gave you the 
Book ?” 

“Yes. He told me Joe and grandma were good peo- 
ple — ‘ conservative good people,’ I think he called it ; 
but he said you believed nothing, and there was no 
basis, I think he called it, for ‘ conservative good ’ in 
you.” 

“ O hala hala! But this is good,” the Captain softly 
remarked, stroking his golden mustache with the hand 
that carried the lustrous ring. “ Patty Cannon may be 
saved ; I must be damned ; and Allan McLane will sit 
in judgment. No, I believe nothing, because such as they 
believe !” 

“That is why nobody likes you,” Hulda frankly ob- 
served, “ agreeable as you are.” 

“And can you believe in anything after the surround- 
ings of your childhood, touching crime like the pond-lily 
that grows among the water-snakes ?” 

“The lily cannot help it, and is just as white as if it 
grew under glass, because — ” 

“ Because the lily has none of the blood of the snake ?” 
the captain lisped. “ Do you enter that claim ?” 

“No,” said Hulda; “I know I am born from wicked 
parents, a daughter of crime, my father hanged, my moth- 


cannon’s ferry. 


341 


er of dreadful origin, but never have I felt that God held 
me accountable for their works if I kept my heart hum- 
ble and my hands from sin ; and never have I been 
tempted yet from within my own nature to enjoy a single 
moment of such hideous selfishness. And I thank my 
kind Maker that something to love and believe in, though 
unhappy as myself, has come down the sad pathway I 
looked along so many years, and found me waiting for 
him.” 

Without reply, the Captain kept his own thoughts for 
several minutes, and finally sighed : 

“I know one thing in which I might believe, pretty 
child.” 

“ Oh, then embrace it,” Hulda said, “ and give your 
faith a single straw to cling to.” 

Van Dorn’s hand slipped around her waist, and his 
florid cheeks and blue eyes bent beneath her Leghorn 
hat : 

“ I find it here, perhaps, Hulda. Shall I embrace 
your youth with my strong passion ? I fear I love you.” 

“ Yes,” she answered, looking up with her long-lashed 
eyes of such entrancing gray; “ kiss me if it will give you 
hope !” 

The blush and high color went out of his face as he 
stared into those passive, large gray orbs, wide open be- 
neath his pouting, rich, effeminate lips, and, as he hesi- 
tated, Hulda repeated : 

“ Kiss me, if it will make you hope !” 

“ No, no,” he answered ; “ of all places I am most hope- 
less there 

“ I knew you would not kiss me,” Hulda said, with a 
tone above him, “ if I gave you the right for any pure ob- 
ject. The kiss you would give me does not see its mate 
in my soul.” 

“ You hate me, then?” said Van Dorn. 

“ No, I pity you ; X pray for you, too.” 


342 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ For me ? What interest have you in me ?” 

“ I do not know,” said Hulda. “ I have often wondered 
what made me think of you so often and, yet, never with 
admiration. You are the only person here who appears 
to have lost something by being here ; some portion of 
you seems to have disappeared ; I have felt that you 
might have been a gentleman, though you can never be 
again. I shrink from you, and still I pity you. But, with 
all your handsome ways, I would never love you, while 
the poor boy who is riding with us I loved as soon as he 
came.” 

“Chis ! chito ! You can shrink from me and not from 
a Cannon, too? Why, girl, you have put him in my 
power.” 

“ I have been in your power for a long time, Captain 
Van Dorn, and you have looked at me with bold and evil 
eyes many a time, but never came nearer. When I gaze 
at you as I did just now, you fly from me. That boy I 
love is as safe as I am, in your hands.” 

“ Why, dear presumer ? Tell me.” 

“ Because I love him, and you require my pity. As 
long as you protect that poor orphan boy I shall carry 
your name to God for pardon ; if you ever do him harm, 
my prayers for you will be dumb forever.” 

“Oh! aym'e ! ayme /” softly laughed Van Dorn, his 
blush not coming now ; “ you forget, Hulda, that I believe 
in nothing.” 

They had hardly gone four miles when a little, low- 
pitched town of small square houses, strewn about like 
toy-blocks between pairs of red outside chimneys, sat, in 
the soft, humid October morning, along the rim of a 
marshy creek that, skirting the hamlet, flowed into the 
Nanticoke River a few miles, by its course, above Twi- 
ford’s wharf. Two streets, formed by two roads, ended in 
a third street along the sandy, flattish river shore, and 
there stood four or five larger dwellings, like their hum- 


cannon’s ferry. 


343 


bier neighbors, built of wood, but with bolder, greater chim- 
neys, rising into the air as if in rivalry of four large ships 
and brigs that lay at anchor or beside the two wharves, 
and threw their masts and spars into the sailing clouds, 
making the low forest that closed river and village in, 
stoop to its humility. But the beautiful river, with fre- 
quent bluffs of sand and woods, flowing two hundred 
yards wide in stately tide, and bearing up to Cannon’s 
Ferry fish-boats and pungieS, Yankee schooners and wood- 
scows, and the signs of life, however lowly, that floated 
in blue smoke from many hearths, or sounded in oars, 
rigging, and lading, seemed to Hulda human joy and 
power, and she cried to Levin : 

“ Levin, oh, look ! Did you ever see as big a place as 
this? Yonder is the road to Seaford, just as far as we 
have come ! The big ships are taking corn for West In- 
dies, and bringing sugar and molasses. That is the ferry 
scow, and on the other side it is only five miles to Lau- 
rel.” 

“ Do you like to travel that road ?” asked the Captain, 
with his pleasing lisp and blush returned again. 

“ It makes me sad,” replied Hulda; “ but I do not mut- 
ter when I go past the spot, like grandma.” 

“,What spot ?” asked Levin. 

“ Where father killed the traveller,” Hulda said. “ He 
died shamefully for it. You could almost see the place 
but for yonder woods, where the road to Laurel climbs the 
sandy hill.” 

“What’s this?” said Van Dorn, seeing a little crowd 
around one of the single-story cabins, and turning his 
team into the parallel street. 

A very tall, grand-looking man towered above the rest, 
and seemed unable to stand upright in the low cottage, 
with his proportions, so that he took his place on the 
grassy sand without and gave his directions to some one 
within : 


344 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Levy on the spinning-wheel ! Simplify the equation ! 
Stand by your ft. fa. ! Don’t be chicken-hearted, consta- 
ble — she’s had the equivalent ; now she sees the quotient, 
too.” 

Van Dorn looked on and saw a spinning-wheel come 
out of the door, and a little wool in a bag after it. Jacob 
Cannon put his foot on the wheel and poked his head in 
the door, 

“ I see an axe and a coffee-mill there, constable : levy 
onto ’em with your distringas. Experientia docet stultos i 
Pass out that pair of shoes !” 

A voice of a woman crying was heard, and Van Dorn 
and Levin both leaped out to look. 

Hulda also stepped down and disappeared. 

A woman, barely able to stand up, and white as illness 
and anguish could make her, had staggered to the door 
to beg that her shoes be given back, and pointed to her 
naked feet. 

“ Now she’s off the bed, levy on that !” cried the mili- 
tary figure with the long, eloquent face and twinkling eyes ; 
“ shove it out the window. Mind your ft. fa. and I’ll take 
care of the quotient.” 

“Have mercy !” cried the woman ; “ my child was only 
born last week.” 

“ Fling out that good chair there, constable. Levy on 
the green chest ! Don’t you see a whole quilt or blanket 
anywhere ! Allow neither tret nor suttle when you serve 
a writ for Isaac and Jacob Cannon !” 

“ Where shall I lie with my babe ?” cried the poor 
woman, looking around on the naked cabin, where nei- 
ther bed, nor blanket, nor chair, nor chest, nor spinning- 
wheel remained. 

“ Li-vari facias! and ft-eri facias ! If there’s a mistake 
a replevin lies, but no mistakes are made by Isaac and 
Jacob Cannon. Constable, I think I see an iron pot on 
that crane 1” 


cannon’s ferry. 


345 

“ It’s got meat in it, sir — meat a-bilin’,” answered the 
constable. 

“ Turn out the meat ! Levy on the pot ! Make the 
quotient accurate ! Eliminate the pot from the equa- 
tion !” 

Out came the pot, as the material boiling in it put out 
the October fire, and it was thrown in the miscellaneous 
heap at Jacob Cannon’s feet. 

“ Now take the cradle, hard-hearted man,” the woman 
cried, “ and turn the baby into the fire, too, since I can 
cook nothing to make its milk in my breasts.” 

“ Is the cradle worth anything, constable ?” asked the 
magnificent - looking man with the gray silvery lights 
around his horsy nose ; “ if it’s worth taking, I want it. 
People who can’t pay their debts must live single like 
Jacob Cannon, and not be distrained.” 

A boy, with his face scratched, and dissipation settled 
in it, bounded suddenly into the aghast group of specta- 
tors, and made a vicious dive to recover the effects around 
Jacob Cannon’s feet, but that mighty worthy took him by 
the collar and, holding him up, dropped him over a fence 
like a bug : 

“ Owen Daw, here be witnesses to an assault insulins , 
actionable as a trespass vi t the quotient whereof is dam- 
ages or the equivalent in Georgetown jail. Take heed, 
good citizens, and especially I note you, Captain Van 
Dorn.” 

“ I’ll kill .him,” shouted the young bully of Johnson’s 
Cross-roads, and late distrainer on the profile of Cyrus 
James, Esquire, seizing an ugly stick. 

“Justifiable as son assault demesne ,” remarked the cred- 
itor, carelessly, as he wrenched the bobbin from the spin- 
ning-wheel and knocked the boy down with it. 

His commanding manner and the ready hand operated 
to abash the latter, and, deeply pained with the scene, 
Levin Dennis fervently and impulsively cried to Van Dorn : 


34 & 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“Oh, Captain ! can’t you pay her debts ! I’ll give all 
Joe’s going to give me, to pay you back. See how she 
lays on the bare floor ! Hear her child crying for her ! 
Oh ! I tnink I hear my mother’s voice a-callin’ of me home 
as I listen to it.” 

Van Dorn, feeling Levin’s hands grasp his own with 
simple confidence, heard and did not turn his head, while 
blushes like roses bloomed successively upon his fresh, 
effeminate cheeks. He did not repel the boy’s hands, 
however, but looked at the scene with worldly and un- 
pitying curiosity. 

“To pay the distraints of Isaac and Jacob Cannon,” 
he murmured, softly, “would keep a poor slaver poor. 
You must grow accustomed to such cries : I had to do 
so. Learn to love money like that merchant and me, and 
you will think them music.” 

“ Oh, when we cry to God for mercy, captain, maybe 
our cries will sound like that ! I can’t bear to hear it.” 

“You told mother, Jake Cannon, when she rented this 
ole house,” the boy, Owen Daw, exclaimed, “ that she 
needn’t pay the rent, if she didn’t want to, till the day of 
judgment.” 

“I’ve got the judgment,” Jacob Cannon answered, his 
whitish eyes seeming to chuckle to the bridge of his nose, 
“ and this is the day it’s due. All legal days are ‘ judg- 
ment days’ to Isaac and Jacob Cannon.” 

“ My son, my son,” the woman’s voice wailed out to 
Owen Daw, “ I see the end of your going to Patty Can- 
non’s : my baby to the grave, myself to the almshouse, 
and you to the gallows.” 

“Captain, Captain,” Levin cried, “oh, pay the debt for 
me ! Mother’s never been poor as this. Pay it, and I 
will work fur you anywhair, dear captain.” 

“ How much is the debt,” asked Van Dorn, lispingly. 

“Ten dollars,” spoke the constable, also moved to 
shame. 


cannon’s ferry. 


347 


“ Cannon, will you take me for it ?” 

“ I’ll take your judgment-bond or the cash, Captain 
Van Dorn, nothing less.” 

“Put back her stuff,” the captain said, slightly press- 
ing Levin’s hand, as if to say, “ This is for you ” — “ put 
back her stuff and I’ll settle it with Isaac Cannon.” 

“ God bless you !” cried the woman, taking her babe 
from the cradle and hushing its hunger at her breast ; 
“ they call you a wicked man, but blessings on you for all 
the good you do !” 

“ Chito ! chito /” smiled Van Dorn. “I did it for this 
foolish boy ; I pity none.” 

Hulda had resorted to the strand, or river street of 
Cannon’s Ferry, where there were two storehouses, and 
she had borrowed quill and ink, and written a letter ad- 
dressed to “ Mrs. Ellenora Dennis, Princess Anne, Somer- 
set County, Maryland,” saying : 

“ Madam , Levin , your son, is near this place against his 
will, among dangerous men and in great temptation, but he 
has found a friend ’ In one week this friend will try to 
write again, and, if not heard from , seek Levin Dennis at 
Johnson's Cross-roads .” 

This letter, written with all her unproficient speed, had 
just been folded, wafered, and endorsed, and she had 
put down one of the shillings of 1815 to pay the postage, 
when a shadow fell upon the store counter, and the letter 
was withdrawn from her hand ; Van Dorn stood by her 
side. 

11 C his l chito! Es posible? A spy, perhaps. Now 
you will love Van Dorn, or Grandma Cannon shall hear 
your letter read !” 

“Give it to me, Captain,” Hulda pleaded ; “she will kill 
me if she reads it.” 

“ If it were sen t, pomarosa, we all might die. No, you 
are too dangerous.” 

He looked, without his blush, at the shilling she was 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


348 

putting back in her bosom, and his eye was cold and 
fierce. Hulda’s heart sank down. 

“ Brother Isaac,” cried Jacob Cannon, to a man of fine, 
lean height, who was at the desk — a man a little shorter 
than Jacob, and not so much of a king in appearance, 
but with the same whitish eyes dancing around the bridge 
of his nose, and a more covert and thoughtful brow — 
“ Brother Isaac, Captain Van Dorn is chicken-hearted, 
and wants to settle the debt of the Widow O’Day, other- 
wise Daw.” 

“ By cash or judgment-note, captain ?” 

“ Cash,” answered Van Dorn, modestly ; “ take it out 
of this double-eagle, with Madam Cannon’s rent for your 
farm.” 

“ There’s a tree — a bee-tree, Brother Jacob, I think you 
said — cut down from Mrs. Cannon’s field ?” 

“ Yes, actionable under statute made and provided, 
wilfully to spoil or destroy any timber or other trees, 
roots, shrubs, or plants ; value of said bee-tree three dol- 
lars ; levari facias ! The quotient is unsatisfactory to 
Isaac and Jacob Cannon.” 

The eyes of the elder and smaller brother endeav- 
ored to have an introduction to each other through the 
bridge of his nose. 

“ Oh, Brother Jacob,” he chuckled, “ what an executive 
help you air ! Captain, isn’t he a perfect Marius?” 

“ Madam Cannon,” observed the captain, “ throws up 
the farm with this payment, gentlemen. She has already 
moved her effects across the line to son-in-law Johnson’s. 
The bee-tree I know nothing about.” 

“Brother Jacob,” spoke Isaac Cannon, “Moore takes 
the farm ! Let him be notified that his rent commences 
without day.” 

“ Execution made, Brother Isaac,” answered the Ma- 
rius of the family. “This morning, perceiving Patty 
Cannon about to move her effects, my bailiff seized on 


cannon’s ferry. 


349 


her plough as security for the aforesaid bee-tree spoiled, 
maimed, and destroyed, and Moore is ploughing to put 
in his wheat with it already. Time is money to Isaac and 
Jacob Cannon.” 

“ Ha, ha ! what an executive comfort ! Brother Jacob 
never adds an item to profit and loss.” 

“ Gentlemen,” said Van Dorn, “ I recommend you not 
to be charging bee-trees to tenants in the vicinity of 
Johnson’s Cross-roads. It’s an unusual item, and we are 
raising young men there who may not understand it.” 

“ Captain,” said the elder Cannon, chuckling as if still 
in admiration of Marius’s subtlety, “ I recollect now that 
our ferryman brought over a man from Laurel this morn- 
ing with some news. A woman with a broken shackle 
reported there last night, and said she was the slave of 
Daniel Custis of Princess Anne : she came from Broad 
Creek.” 

“ Where did she go ?” 

“ A Methodist preacher put her in his buggy and start- 
ed to her master’s with her.” 

“Then she’ll beat the wind,” said Van Dorn ; “these 
preachers are all horse -jockeys, and can outswap the 
devil. Hola ! ya, ya ! I must see to this.” 

He strode out, with a cold eye glanced at Hulda. 

“ Come, young people,” spoke the grand head of Jacob 
Cannon to Levin and Hulda ; “ I will show you my mu- 
seum.” 

He led the way to a warehouse overhanging the river 
and unlocked a door, and told them to walk carefully 
till they could see in the dark of the interior. 

Levin kept Hulda’s hand in his as they slowly saw 
emerge from the shadows a great variety of dissimilar 
things heaped together, till the house could hardly hold 
the vast aggregate of pots and kettles, spinning-wheels 
and cradles, bedsteads and beds, harrows and ploughs, 
chairs and gridirons, rakes and hoes, silhouettes and pict- 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


35 ° 

ure-frames, hand-made quilts of calico and pillows of 
home-plucked geese feathers, fishermen’s nets and oars — 
whatever made the substance of living in an old country 
without minerals and manufactures, in the early part of 
the nineteenth century. 

“ Whare did you git ’em, sir ?” Levin asked. 

“ Executed of ’em,” said the warrior head and stature 
of Jacob Cannon ; “pounced on ’em ; satisfied judgments 
upon ’em. Fi.fa.! We call this Peale’s Museum Num- 
ber Two, or the Variegated Quotient.” 

“ All these things taken from the poor ?” asked Hulda. 
“ How many miseries they tell !” 

“ Mr. Cannon,” said Levin, “ what kin you do with 
’em ? People won’t buy ’em. They’re just a-rottin’ to 
pieces.” 

“ We keep ’em to show all them who trespass on Isaac 
and Jacob Cannon,” answered Marius, with easy gran- 
deur, “ that there is a judgment-day!” 

Hulda’s long-lashed gray eyes, with a look of more 
than childish contempt, accompanied her words : 

“ I should think you would fear that day, Mr. Cannon, 
when you say the prayer, ‘ Forgive us our trespasses as we 
forgive those who trespass against us.’ ” 

The wind from the river seemed to bend the old ware- 
house, and the noise it made through the chinks and 
around the corners, slightly stirring the loosely disposed 
pile of cottage and hut comforts, seemed to arouse low 
wails among these as when they were torn from the chim- 
ney side and the family. 

“ Where is my baby ?” the cradle seemed to say, “ that 
I received and rocked warm from the womb of pain ? 
Oh, I am hungry for his little smile !” 

“ Why do I rest my busy wheel ?” the spinner seemed 
to creak, “ when I know my children are without stock- 
ings ? Who keeps me here idle while Mother asks for 
me?” 


cannon’s ferry. 


35 1 


“ Where is the old gray head,” sighed the feathers, sift- 
ing in the breeze from a broken pillow-case, “that every 
night and in the afternoons dozed on our bag of down, 
and picked us over once a year, and said her prayers in 
us ? Oh, is she sleeping on the cold, bare floor, and we 
so useless !” 

The pot seethed to the kettle, “ It is dinner-time, and 
the little boys are crying for food, and still there is no one 
to lift me on the crane and start the fire beneath me ! 
What will they think of me, they gathered around so many 
years and watched me boil, and poked their little fingers 
in to taste the stewing meat ? I want to go ! I want to 
go!” 

The kettle answered to the pot : “ I never sung since 
the constable forced me from grandmother’s hand, and 
robbed her of the cup of tea.” 

The old quilt of many squares fluttered in the draught : 
“ Take me to the young wife who sewed me together and 
showed me so proudly, for I fear she is a-cold since her 
young husband died J” 

These household sounds the thrilled young lovers, 
standing so poor and on the brink of what they knew not, 
seemed to hear in awe, and drew closer to each other, 
like young Eve and Adam in the great wreck of Paradise 
and at the voice of God. 

Hand in hand they stepped forth into the bright light 
of day, and walked along the sandy street beneath the 
tall locust, maple, and ailanthus trees that grew in line 
along the front yards of the Cannon brothers. Four 
large houses stood sidewise, end to end, here : first, Can- 
non’s business house ; next, Isaac Cannon’s comfortable 
home, where he dwelt, a married man ; and, third, the 
elegant frame mansion, with tall, airy chimneys, of Jacob 
Cannon the bachelor, whose house, built for a bride, 
had never yet been warmed by a fire ; finally, the old, 
bow-roofed, low dwelling of the mother of the Cannons, 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


352 

opposite which was the ferry wharf, and Van Dorn talking 
to the negro ferryman. 

“ Levin,” said pretty Hulda, not sad, but very grave, 
“ this noble house is like that noble-looking Mr. Cannon, 
hollow and cold. He lives with his brother Isaac, and 
keeps his own dwelling empty and locked up, because he 
loved money too much to find a wife.” 

“Let us love each other, Huldy,” Levin said; “it is 
all we’ve got.” 

“ It is all there is to get, my love,” Hulda answered. 
“Yes, I do love you, Levin. I will try to save you, if I 
can, because I love you, though suffering may come to 
me.” 

“ No,” cried Levin, “ I cannot leave you, dear. If I 
could now cross in the ferry-boat, I wouldn’t do it ; I 
must go back with you.” 

As Captain Van Dorn came up from the wharf, blush- 
ing like a school-boy, and tapping his white teeth togeth- 
er under the long flax of his mustache, his attention was 
arrested by a proclamation pasted on a post : 

11 Five Hundred Dollars Reward, for 
Joseph Moore Johnson, Kidnapper. 

“ The above reward will be paid by me to any person or 
persons — and they will be exempted from detention — who 
will deliver to me the body of the above-named miscreant, that 
he may be brought to trial in Pennsylvania. 

“Joseph Watson, Mayor of Philadelphia.” 

“Chis ! he!” Van Dorn sighed; “the end must soon 
be near. Now, young people, come !” 

As they passed Cannon’s place, going out of town, the 
familiar voice of Jacob was heard to cry : 

“ Owen Daw’s escaped, Brother Isaac ; but we’ll clap 
it to him on a de bonis non. I’ll never take my eye off 
him till I die.” 


cannon’s ferry. 


353 


" Brother Jacob, what an executive help you air !” 

As Van Dorn drove the horses up the slight ascent in 
the rear of the ferry, past an ancient double puncheon 
house there, with an arch in the centre, young Hulda — 
who now wore shoes and stockings, and a presentable 
dress of English goods, and looked quite the woman our 
of her sincere and sometimes proud and eloquent eyes — 
said to him, as she pointed back : 

“ Captain, it was there my father killed the traveller, 
where we see the road beyond the ferry enter the 
pines.” 

“Yes,” said Van Dorn, giving her a cold look; “we 
might see the place but for the woods. It is at a hill, a 
short mile from the Nanticoke.” 

“ Tell Levin about it, captain.” 

“ Quedo , quedo ! It would not be pleasant.” 

“Yes,” said Hulda; “if it was true, I can hear it : I 
want Levin to hear it, too, so that no deceit shall be be- 
tween us.” 

Her smooth, moist hair, gray, humid eyes, complexion 
born between the rose and dew, and straight, lithe figure, 
and air of dignity and truth, impressed Van Dorn curi- 
ously : 

“ How bold you grow, wild-flower ! Cannot you stoop 
to re-create me ? I, too, would live without deceit. But 
I will not tell you that story.” 

“ You are afraid,” spoke Hulda, feeling that nothing 
but this man and three miles of level road separated her 
from the vengeance of Patty Cannon, and that she must 
assert herself strongly over him. 

“ Ya, ya ! Are you not harsh ? Remember, you may 
be whipped by your grandma.” 

“ No, you will whip me, or kill me, if it is to be done. 
You dare not give me to her to punish.” 

“ Dare not, again ? Why ?” 

“ Because you are my guardian. Between us is an in- 

23 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


354 

stinct different from love, but strong ; I feel it. I lean 
towards you, but not on you. What is it ?” 

“ O Dios P- lisped Van Dorn, his blush suspended and 
his warm blue eyes fascinated by her. “ Is this a child 
or Echo ?” 

“Tell me of my father’s crime. I want Levin to know 
the wretched thing he has affection for.” 

“ Ayme ! ah! Well, listen, young lovers, and see what 
grisly things walk in these pines ! There was a man 
named Brereton ; they call him Bruington here, where 
their noses are twisted and their chins weak. He came 
from old Lewes, off to the east by Cape Henlopen, and 
of a stout family, in which was a grain of evil ever smok- 
ing through the blood. Do you sometimes feel it, Hul- 
da ?” 

“ No, not evil like that.” 

“ He was apprenticed to a blacksmith, and held the 
iron while the master struck. One day a man came in 
the shop, whose horse had thrown a shoe, to have a shoe- 
ing, and, when he paid for it, he took a handful of money 
from his pocket, and one piece — a dollar — fell in the soft 
soot of the shop, unperceived but by the boy: chis! he 
covered it with his foot.” 

Van Dorn’s whip-lash firmly covered a huge fly on the 
horse’s ear, and laid it dead. 

“When the man departed, the boy raised his foot and 
uncovered the dollar; his master said, ‘Smart boy!’ 
They divided the stolen dollar.” 

“ Jimmy Phoebus says the fust step is half of a jour- 
ney,” Levin noted. 

“The blacksmith’s boy looked avariciously on travel- 
lers ever after, who might possess a dollar. He took the 
empty shop of Patty Cannon’s first husband, years after 
that saint died, and worked on hobbles, clevises, and 
chains to hold the kidnapped articles of commerce. Nat- 
urally he kidnapped, too, and, while she was yet a child, 


cannon’s ferry. 


355 

Patty’s daughter became Brereton’s wife, bestowed by the 
fond, appreciative mother. Master Levin, if you fall into 
his path, Brereton’s daughter may be bestowed on you. 
Hola ! behold her in Hulda.” 

“ I can’t see any of that sin in Hulda, Captain ; she 
ain’t even ashamed.” 

“No,” affirmed Hulda, looking sincerely at Van Dorn ; 
“ it is too true to make me ashamed. I feel as if God’s 
hand covered me like the silver dollar under my father’s 
foot, because he let me survive such parents.” 

As she spoke she took one of the silver shillings of 1815 
and covered it with her hand in Van Dorn’s sight. Van 
Dorn spoke on rapidly : 

“ There were two brothers named Griffin from about 
Cambridge, in Maryland ; spoiled boys who had taken to 
the flesh trade, and they stole men and gambled the pro- 
ceeds away, and Brereton was their leader. One day a 
traveller came by from Carolina, hunting contraband 
slaves, and he was of your boastful sort, and dropped the 
hint that he had fifteen thousand dollars on his body to 
be invested. No later had he spoken than he felt his 
folly, from the burning eyes around him and watering 
mouths telling him to sleep there and slaves would be 
fetched ; so he started in a fright for Laurel, by way of 
Cannon’s Ferry, intending to deposit his money or make 
them deal with him there. The word was passed to Bre- 
reton by his wife or mother-in-law, and by Brereton to the 
Griffins, to mount and intercept the gold. Some say,” 
lisped Van Dorn, “ that Mistress Cannon, dressed in 
man’s clothes, commanded the band.” 

A deep, chuckling interest, like the sound of a hidden 
brook, attended Van Dorn’s recital, and he was blushing 
like a girl. 

“ At Slabtown, a nondescript spot a mile above Can- 
non’s, the light-marching band crossed in a row-boat ; 
they piled brush and bent down saplings in the travel- 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


35 ^ 

ler’s road, where he should almost reach the brow of the 
hill in his buggy, and when the fleshmonger halted at the 
obstacle, chis , hola ! they let him have it on both sides, 
and sent icicles to his heart. He drew a pistol, but in a 
dying hand. .‘Away!’ cried the assassins; ‘he is not 
dead.’ His horse, in fright at bursting fire-arms in the 
evening shades, leaped the brushy barriers and galloped 
to Laurel, and delivered there an ashy-visaged effigy, 
down whose beard the red dye of his life dripped audi- 
bly, as he sat stiff in death in the buggy. His name was 
only guessed ; how happy he in that !” 

“ And what was the fate of the murderers ?” Hulda 
asked, with less horror than Levin showed. 

“ Three of them were arrested ; one of the Griffins ex- 
posed his brother and Captain Brereton ; these two died 
on the gallows at Georgetown, young Brereton exerting 
himself under the noose to prevent his injudicious com- 
rade saying too much on peerless Patty Cannon and her 
fair sisters, and thinking on their interests more than on 
this living child. Ha ! Hulda Brereton ?” 

“ The other Griffin also suffered death ?” suggested 
Hulda, with a pale, unevasive countenance. 

“Yes, your fond grandma, then in her blazing charms, 
drew him to her band again with the lure of Widow 
Brereton’s hand ; he killed a constable to recommend 
himself the better, and died on the gallows at his native 
Cambridge. Hala hala ! she gave your mother, wild- 
flower Hulda, to Joe Johnson next to wife.” 

“ It is an awful story,” Levin said, “ but Hulda never 
saw it.” 

“ I can remember my father,” said Hulda ; “ a large, 
strong man, with a slow, heavy face, but he never smiled 
on me.” 

“ Well, here is the cross-roads,” said Van Dorn. “What 
shall I do with this letter, bad wild-flower ?” 

“ Read it, if you will, or take this English shilling and 
post it.” 


PACIFICATION. 


357 


Van Dorn shrank back, rejecting the money. 

“ Will you not buy it back, Hulda,” he whispered, 
“with love?” 

“ Never.” 

“ You may pay for this letter this night with your life 
or modesty !” 

“ You dare not kill me,” Hulda said. 

“You will see,” said Van Dorn. 


Chapter XXVIII. 

PACIFICATION. 

Princess Anne had missed for several days some con- 
spicuous citizens, such as Daniel Custis and wife, Captain 
Phoebus, Levin Dennis, and the free negro Samson — large 
components of a small town ; but it had also gained what 
everybody admitted to be the most beautiful woman in 
the place except Mrs. Vesta Milburn — the brown-eyed, 
tall, roguish niece of Meshach Milburn, whom Vesta had 
made a lady of in externals, corrected some of her faults, 
such as the sniffle, and was daily teaching her the mys- 
teries of grammar and address, aided by the rector of the 
parish, whose heart was roused to partial animation again 
by the young visitor. 

Loyally William Tilghman had pressed his friendship 
on Vesta’s semi-social husband, determined to like him, 
and finding small resistance there, and, happily, no suspi- 
cion ; and this was so grateful to Vesta that she indulged 
the hope that her cousin and late lover would find com- 
pensation for her loss in Rhoda Holland. 

Love came easily on as a topic of talk where Rhoda, 
with her unconventional preference for that subject, intro- 
duced it. 

“ Mr. William ” — she had got that far towards the in- 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


358 

evitable “William ” — said Rhoda, one evening at Teackle 
Hall, as they sat in the library, “do preachers love jus’ 
like other folks ? Misc Somers say they is drea’fle sly- 
boots. She say thar was a preacher down yer to Girdle 
Tree Hill that preached the Meal-an-the-Yum was a-goin’ 
to happen right off.” 

“ Millennium,” suggested Tilghman. 

“Maybe so. Misc Somers call it ‘the Meal-an-the- 
Yum,’ I thought. Anyway, they was all goin’ to rise, 
right off, an’ he with ’em. Lord sakes ! they had frills 
put on thar night-gowns to rise in. An’ the night before 
they was a-goin’ up, that ar scamp run away with a wid- 
der an’ her darter, jilted the widder an’ married the dar- 
ter ; an’ they couldn’t rise at Girdle Tree Hill caze the 
preacher wa’n’t thar, an’ they didn’t know when.” 

“And I suppose Mrs. Somers tells it on him?” William 
Tilghman added. 

“That she do. Now, was you ever in love, Mr. Will- 
iam?” 

“ I have been thinking, Rhoda, that when you are a 
good scholar, and grandmother and you grow to like each 
other, as I believe you will, I might fall in love with you.” 

“Lord sakes! Me loved by a preacher? Couldn’t 1 
never stay home from the preachin’ ? But then, to hear 
your own ole man a-barkin’ away at the other gals, I 
think it would be right good !” 

The subject had now gone to that length that in a few 
days, to Grandmother Tilghman’s slight indignation, Rho- 
da called the rector “William,” and he answered her, 
“ Dear Rhoda.” 

The triple widow, however, had one lane to her consid- 
eration, up which the artful Rhoda strayed as soon as she 
saw the gate ajar. 

“ Misc Tilghman,” she said one day, “ I been a-look- 
in’ at you. I ’spect you was a real beauty. If you wasn’t 
a little quar, nobody would see you was a ole woman now.” 


PACIFICATION. 


359 


“ I was a belle,” spoke the blind old lady, emphatical- 
ly. “General John Eager Howard said he would rather 
talk with me than hear an oration from Fisher Ames. 
Charles Carroll, of Carrollton, proposed to me when I was 
old enough to be your grandmother, and after Susan De- 
catur, the commodore’s widow, had tried in vain to get an 
offer from him. Said I, ‘ Carroll, is this another Declara- 
tion of Independence? No,’ said I, ‘Carroll, I won’t 
reduce the last signer, it may be, to obedience on a wife 
going blind. That would be worse slavery than George 
the Third’s !’ He said I was a Spartan widow.” 

“ Every widow I ever see was a sparkin’ widow,” Rhoda 
naively concluded, at which Mrs. Tilghman had to join in 
the laughter, and there was no evil feeling. 

Jack Wonnell now held the temporary post of cook 
and woodchopper at Teackle Hall, and Roxy saw him 
every day, sewed his tattered clothing up, put the germs 
of self-respect in him, and caused Vesta to say to her 
husband, as they were sitting in his storehouse parlor one 
afternoon, in the intermission of his chill and sweat : 

“ Such rapid changes have takep place here, Mr. Mil- 
burn, that they have disturbed my judgment, and now I 
hardly know whether my oldest prejudice is assured, as I 
see that white man the happy domestic servant of my 
pure slave girl. She seems to have no greater affection 
than pity and interest for him, while he is made more of 
a man by his undisguised devotion to her. No man could 
work better than he does now.” 

“ Love is so great, so occult,” the husband said, his 
brown eyes searching his wife’s face over, “ that its com- 
binations have centuries left to run before they shall 
beat every prejudice down, and prove, in spite of sin and 
dispersion, that of one blood are all the nations made.”* 

* At this point the second episode, telling the descent of the En- 
tailed Hat from Raleigh to Anne Hutchinson, is omitted, to shorten 
the book. 


360 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


Chapter XXIX. 

BEGINNING OF THE RAID. 

The raid into Delaware was all organized when Levin 
and Hulda were driven to Johnson’s tavern, and the ar- 
rival of Van Dorn called forth cheers and yells, as that 
blushing worthy threw his trim, athletic figure out of the 
wagon and bowed to Joe Johnson, on the tavern porch : 

“ O hala hala ! do you go, son-in-law ?” 

“ I’ll ride with ye, Captain, a split of the Maryland way, 
but sprat for that Delaware ! I’ll go in it no more. I’ll 
stand whack with you, however, fur the madges I give you 
and fur my stalling ken.” 

“ Quedito /” lisped Van Dorn; “we never leave your 
interests out, son-in-law. How is Aunt Patty?” 

“ She’s made a punch fur the population, an’ calls fur 
young Levin thar to lush with her.” 

“ I’ll take mine along,” Levin cried, “ an’ drink it in 
the chill o’ the night.” 

“ No,” commanded the voice of Patty Cannon; “it’s 
a-waitin’ fur you, son : a good stiff bowl of apple and 
sugar. Him as misses his drinks yer we sets no ac- 
count on.” 

As Van Dorn and Levin pushed through the motley 
crowd on the little porch into the bar, where Mrs. Can- 
non administered, she set before them two fiery bowls, 
and cried : 

“Come in yer, Colonel McLane, an’ jine my nug an’ 
my young cousin Levin.” 

“No, Patty,” answered a voice from the next room 
within ; “ I’ve drunk my share. There’s nothing like a 
conservative course.” 


BEGINNING OF THE RAID. 361 

As Patty put her head into this inner room, Levin Den- 
nis, seeing a window open at his elbow, threw the whole 
of his liquor over his shoulder into the yard and smacked 
his lips heartily, saying, 

“Good!” 

“Ha!” exclaimed Van Dorn, evidently noticing Lev- 
in’s deceit ; “ smart people are around us, Patty. Be- 
ware !” 

He took from his pocket the fateful letter and glanced 
at its endorsement, and, as he did so, Levin heard an ex- 
clamation in the yard from a man who had received the 
whole of the apple brandy and sugar in his face, and was 
furious ; but as soon as he seemed to recognize the 
thrower he muttered, apologetically : 

“ Hokey-pokey ! By smoke ! and Pangymonum, too !” 

When Levin looked at Van Dorn again, the blush. was 
on his face, but the letter had disappeared. 

“ Beware of the conservative course, Colonel,” lisped 
Van Dorn, “except when generous Patty makes the 
punch ; for she holds such measure of it that she does 
not see our infirmities.” 

“ Honey,” cried Patty Cannon to Levin, giving him an 
affectionate hug, “ have ye swallered yer liquor so smart 
as that ? Why, I love to see a nice boy drink.” 

“ But no more for him now, cajela ,” the Captain protest- 
ed ; “ two such will make him fall off his horse. Bebamos , 
Patty! Esta excelente /” — drinking. 

“ How purty the Captain says them things,” the mad- 
am cried to the gentleman within. “ Maybe he’s a mock- 
in’ his ole sweetheart. Oh, Van Dorn, if I thought you 
could forget me I would kill you !” 

Levin noticed the rapid temper and demoniac face of 
this not unengaging lady as she spoke, her whole nature 
turning its course like a wheeling bat, and from plausi- 
bility to an instant’s jealousy, and then to a dark tide of 
awful rage, took but a thought. 


362 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“Que disparate! hala 0 he!” Van Dorn lisped, sweetly, 
chucking the hostess under the chin ; “but I do love to 
see thee so, thou charmer of my life. Never will I desert 
thee, Patty, whilst thou can suffer.” 

Her dark clouds slowly passed away as Levin turned 
from the place, but her small head and abundant raven 
hair showed the blood troubled to the roots, and the eyes, 
once rich with midnight depths, now glazing in the course 
of time, like old window panes, by age, searched the ban- 
dit’s face with a strange fear : 

“Van Dorn, time and pleasure cannot kill you: how 
well you look to-day. I think you are a boy, to be ruined 
again every time you love me, you blush so modestly. 
Where is that pot of color you paint your cheeks with even 
before vie , whose blushes none can recollect ? Why do 
you love me ?” 

“O dios /” said Van Dorn ; “ I love thee for these spells 
of splendor, dark night and noonday passion, the alter- 
nations of earth and hell that eclipse heaven altogether. 
I love to see thee fear, though fearing nothing here, be- 
cause I see nothing that you fear beyond the grave. You 
hate this boy ?” 

“ I hate him worse than wrinkles. Let him not come 
to me a child to-morrow ; let him see ghosts long as he 
lives.” 

“ How are the prisoners, Patty ?” 

“ Why, the white nigger, dovey, is sick to-day ; blood- 
loss and blisters have give him fever. My nigger, that I 
tied — ha ! ha ! a good job for Patty Cannon, at her age ! — 
says t’other’s a pore coaster named Jimmy Phoebus.” 

“Joe must be ready for a quick departure,” the Cap- 
tain exclaimed, “when we come back from Dover: it is 
a bold undertaking, and the whole of the little state will 
be aroused like a black snake uncoiling in one’s pocket.” 

The woman pointed from her shoulder towards the in- 
ner room, and spoke even lower than before : 


BEGINNING OF THE RAID. 


363 


“ Van Dorn, I have a customer.” 

“ For negroes ?” 

“ No, for Huldy. He shall have her.” 
******* 

As Levin Dennis stood at the cross-roads without, he 
saw a strange man ploughing in the farm so recently de- 
serted by his hostess for the gayer cross-roads. The aft- 
ernoon light fell on the sandy fields and struck a polish 
from the ploughshare, and, as the ploughman passed the 
brambly spot again, the buzzards slowly circled up, as if 
to protest that he came too near their young. 

The long, lean servant, who had waited on the break- 
fast-table, came out to Levin and watched his eyes. 

“Ploughin’, ploughin’,” he said. “Levin, I kin show 
you how to plough : I can’t do it, but you’re the man.” 

“ Cyrus, Huldy don’t hate you. She says you’re the 
nighest to a friend she’s got.” 

“ Oh, I love her like sugar-cane,” the lean, cymlin-head- 
ed servant said. “ Tell her I’m goin’ to be a great man. 
I’m goin’ to spile the game. They lick me, but Cy Jeems 
has courage, Levin.” 

“ Cyrus, tell Huldy all that’s goin’ on agin her. We 
don’t know nothin’. You kin go and come an’ nobody 
watches you. Huldy will be grateful fur it.” 

Putting his long arms on his knees and bending down, 
the scullion stared close to Levin’s eyes and whispered, 
looking towards the field : 

“ Ploughin’ ! ploughin’ !” 

Then, turning partly, and gazing over the old tavern 
with a look of wisdom, Cy James whispered again : 

“ Hokey-pokey ! By smoke ! an’ Pangymonum, too !” 

“ I reckon he’s crazy,” Levin thought, as the queer fel- 
low turned and fled. 

It was about three o’clock when the cavalcade was re- 
viewed by Captain Van Dorn from the porch of the hotel, 
and it consisted of about twenty persons, white and black; 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


3*M 

some riding mules, some horses, and there was one wagon 
in the line — the same that had been driven to Cannon’s 
Ferry — intended for Levin, Joe Johnson, and the Captain. 
Van Dorn stood blushing, pulling his long mustache of 
flax, and resting on his cowhide whip. 

“Dave,” he called to a powerful negro, “get down 
from that mule ; you’re too drunk to go. Jump up in his 
place, Owen Daw !” 

The widow’s son gladly vaulted on the animal. 

“Sorden,” continued Van Dorn, “you know all the 
roads: lead the way! Whitecar, go with him ! We ren- 
dezvous at Punch Hall at eight o’clock. The order of 
march is in pairs, a quarter to half a mile apart. If any 
man acts in anything without orders, or halloos upon the 
road, he may get this lash or he may get my knife.” 

“ Captain, where do we feed?” asked a small, wiry mu- 
latto. 

“Water at Federalsburg,” answered Van Dorn; “feed 
at the Punch Hall.” 

They rode off in pairs at intervals of ten minutes ; Van 
Dorn’s vehicle went last. A moment before he departed, 
Cy James touched the Captain’s sleeve and whispered, 
“ Huldy.” Turning to see if he was unobserved, Van 
Dorn followed to the deep-arched chimney at the north- 
ern gable, and dismissed his guide with a look. 

“Captain Van Dorn,” Hulda said, her large gray eyes 
strained in tenderness and nervous courage, “do that boy 
Levin no harm : I love him ! God forgive all your sins, 
many as they are, if you disobey grandmother’s wicked 
commands about my darling !” 

“ Ha ! wild-flower, you have been listening?” 

“ No, I have only looked : I know Aunt Patty’s petting 
ways when she means to ruin, and watch her black flashes 
of cunning between : she is no cousin of Levin ; he is 
Joe’s gentle prisoner; his very name she made him hide 
when she saw you coming this morning.” 


AFRICA. 


3^5 

“ Creo que si: Hulda, let me kiss you !” 

u Yes, if you dare.” 

She gave him that pure, soul-driven, child’s strong look 
again, exerting all the influence she had ever felt she ex- 
ercised over him. 

Nevertheless he kissed her for the first time: 

“ To-day, bonito , I dare to kiss thee. Believe me, my 
kiss is a tender one.” 

“ Yes, sir. There is something like a father in it. Oh, 
my father, art thou in heaven?” 

“ If there be such a place, wild-flower, I think he is.” 

“Oh, thank you, Captain Van Dorn. There may you 
also be and find the faith I feel in my one day’s love on 
earth. I pray for you every day.” 

“ Ayme, poor weakling ! Pray now for thyself: if thou 
canst save thyself sinless a brief day or two, it may be 
well for thee and Levin. Thy grandmother is dreadful 
in her joys this night.” 

“ I can die,” said Hulda, “if Levin be saved.” 

He kissed her again, and something wet dropped down 
his blushes. 

“ Eternal love !” he sighed ; “ I’ve lost it.” 


Chapter XXX. 

AFRICA. 

The Captain took his place at the reins, his picturesque 
velvet jacket, wide hat, bright hair, and gay shirt, thigh- 
ings, belt, and boots, deserving all Patty Cannon’s enco- 
miums as he made^a polite adieu and threw his whip like 
a thunderbolt, and a cheer rose from the discarded volun- 
teers loitering about the tavern as he drove Joe Johnson 
and Levin away. 

The road was nearly dead level for five miles, but, be* 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


366 

ing the old travelled road from Laurel and the south to 
Easton, and pointing towards Baltimore, numerous farms 
and clearings were seen, and tobacco - fields alternated 
with the dry corn and new-ploughed wheat patches. Here 
and there, like a measure of gold poured upon the ground, 
the yellow ears lay in the gaunt corn-rows, to become the 
ground meal of the slave and the cattle’s winter sub- 
stance. Joe Johnson’s popularity was everywhere ap- 
parent, and many a shout was given of,'“ Good luck to 
ye, Joe !” “ Tote us a nigger back from Delaway, Joe !” 

“ Don’t be too hard on them ar black Blue Hen’s chick- 
ens, Joe !” 

Van Dorn was too far above the comprehension of his 
neighbors, or, indeed, of anybody, to be familiarly ad- 
dressed, but “ Patty Cannon’s man ” was the term of in- 
jured inferiority towards him after he had passed. 

At Federalsburg they crossed the branch of the Nanti- 
coke piercing to the centre of Delaware state, and saw 
one large brick house of colonial appearance dominating 
the little wooden hamlet, and here, as generally within 
the Maryland line, hunting negroes was the “ lark ” or the 
serious occupation of many an idle or enterprising fellow, 
who trained his negro scouts like a setter, or more often 
like a spaniel, and crossed the line on appointed nights 
as ardently and warily as the white trader in Africa takes 
to the trails of the interior for human prey. 

“Joe,” said Van Dorn, “what is to be your disposition 
of the prisoners we have ?” 

“ All goes with me to Norfolk but one, — the nigger box- 
er; I burn him alive on Twiford’s island. If the white 
chap is too pickle to sell, I’ll throw him overboard ; he 
ain’t safe.” 

“Ea ! sus / it is boyish to burn the old lad. I have 
had many a blow from a black, and stab, too. A dog will 
bite you if you lasso him.” 

“ No nigger can knock me down and git off with selling.” 


AFRICA. 


367 

“ Then you are a bad trader. The negro’s price is all 
the negro is ; why make him your equal by hating him ?” 

“I am a Delaware boy,” Joe Johnson said, “and it’s 
the pride with me to give no nigger a chance. In Mary- 
land you pets ’em, like ole Colonel Ned Lloyd over yer 
on the Wye ; he’s give his nigger coachman a gole watch 
an’ chain because he’s his son ! What a nimenog ! Some 
day he’ll raise a nigger that’ll be makin’ politikle speech- 
es, an’ then I don’t want to live no more.”* 

“ Chito ! Since the Delaware lawyer sent you to the 
post, son-in-law, you’re morose. I have had to eat with 
negro princes, dance with their queens, and be ceremoni- 
ous as if they had been angels.” 

“ It would be the reign of Queen Dick for me ! I 
couldn’t do it, nohow.” 

“And, by the way, Joseph, I may see your friend, the 
lawyer Clayton, at Dover, to night: he may send me to the 
post, too ; and I fear no Delaware governor will take off 
the cropping of my ears, as was done for you in. state 
patriotism.” 

“ Beware of that imp of Tolobon !” Joe Johnson mut- 
tered. “ How I wish you could kill him, Van Dorn. He’s 
got to be a senator; some day he’ll be chief-justice of 
Delaware: then, what’ll niggers be wuth thar?” 

“ I fancy, Joseph, you might be a legislator in Delaware 
if your inclinations ran that way ?” 

“ Easy enough, but I makes legislators. My wife, 
Margaretta — her first husband’s sister is the wife of the 
chancellor.” 

“ Hola ! oh ! How came that great alliance ?” 

“ She was housekeeper ; he was a close old bachelor 
and must break a leg. ‘ Well,’ she says, ‘ you’re a dad- 
dy; justice is your trade, and I must have it.’ So, from 

* Frederick Douglass, afterwards Marshal of the District of Colum- 
bia, was at this time a slave boy twelve years old, living about twen- 
ty miles from the scene of this conversation. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


368 

bein’ his peculiar, she becomes the madam ; but she in* 
wented the kid.” 

“ I have never been in Dover ; how shall I tell where 
Lawyer Clayton dwells ?” 

“ It’s on the green a-middle of the town, a-standin’ by 
the state-house — a long, roughcast house in the corner, 
three stories high, with two doors ; the door next the 
state-house is his office. Go past the state-house, which 
has a cupelo onto it, an’ you see the jug an’ whippin’- 
post. He’s got ’em handy fur you.” 

Levin listened with all his ears. The liquor was now 
well out of his system, and he thanked God he had re- 
fused Patty Cannon’s burning dram, else he might be this 
night — he thought it with remorse — the reckless mate for 
Owen Daw, whose own mother had predicted the gallows 
for him. 

“ And now, Van Dorn, I turn back,” Joe Johnson said; 
“I have a job to do down the Peninsuly. McLane has 
become the owner of a gal thar, an’ wants her sneaked. I 
takes black Dave with me, an’ when I’m back, my boat 
will be ready an’ my cargo packed. Then hey fur Flor- 
idey !” 

He unhaltered his horse at the tail of the wagon, 
mounted him, and rode back across the stream. Van 
Dorn touched his horses and entered the dense woods in 
a byway to the north. 

“ Get up here, Master Levin, and ride by me,” the 
Captain said, very soon, and he lifted Levin’s old hat 
from his head and looked at his bright hair parted in the 
middle, his fine, large eyes, needing the light of knowl- 
edge, and his soft complexion and marks of good extrac- 
tion. 

“ Where is thy father, Levin, to let thee go so ragged, 
with such graceful limbs and feet as these ?” 

“ Shipwrecked,” said Levin ; “ gone down, I ’spect, on 
the privateer.” 


AFRICA. 


369 

“ A sailor, was he ? Well, he should be home to clothe 
thee and see that thou dost not cheat. I marked how 
Madam Cannon’s punch was tossed out of the window.” 

“ I thought you would not want me drunk beside you 
all night, sir, and then I might enjoy your company. I 
don’t want to drink no more liquor.” 

“You like my company?” 

“Yes, sir.” 

The Captain blushed, and asked, 

“Why do you like me?” 

“ Not fur nothin’ you do, sir. I like you fur somethin’ 
in your ways ; I reckon you’re a smart man.” 

“ Si, senor , that I am. I have gained the whole world 
and lost two.” 

“Two worlds, sir ?” 

“Yes, two immortal worlds ; that is to say, two unac- 
countable worlds. I am no Christian.” 

“Maybe you’re Chinee or Mahometan, then, sir; I 
’spect everybody’s got a religion.” 

“I was a Mahometan for business ends,” Van Dorn 
said. “ Having become a slaver, it was nothing to be a 
renegade. Stealing a man’s soul every day, I put no 
value on mine. Yes, Mahomet is the prophet of God : so 
are you.” 

“ You have been in Afrikey, I ’spect,” suggested Levin. 

“ A few years only, but long enough to be rich and 
to be ruined. I know the negro coast from the Gambia 
to Cape Palmas, and inland to Timbo. I have had an 
African queen and the African fever : I went to conquer 
Africa and became a slave.” 

“In Africa, I ’spect, Captain,” Levin remarked, without 
inference, “a nigger-trader is respectable.” 

Van Dorn shook his head. 

“ I doubt if that trade is respectable anywhere on this 
globe, unless it be here. No, I will say for these people, 
too, that while they do it low lip homage, they look down 
24 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


37 ° 

on it. I was once the greatest guest in Timbo, housed 
with its absolute prince, attended by my suite, looking like 
an ambassador, and he called me ‘ his son ’ and drew me 
to his breast. Proclamations were made that I should be 
respected as such, yet every human object fled before me. 
As I rode out alone to see the gardens and cassava fields, 
the roaming goats and oxen, and the rich mountain pros- 
pects, and saw the sloe-eyed girls bathing in the brooks, 
the cry went round, ‘Flesh-buyer is coming,’ and huts 
were deserted, fields forsaken, the gray patriarchs and the 
little children ran, and I was left alone with the dumb 
animals, despised, abhorred.” 

“ Don’t they have slavery thair, sir ?” 

“Yes, slavery immemorial, yet the slave-buyer is no 
more respectable than the procurer. The coin of Africa, 
its only medium, was the slave. He paid the debt of 
war, of luxury, and of business. Yet the soul of man, in 
the familiar study of such universal slavery, grovels with 
it, and points to bright destiny no more with the head 
erect : I died in Africa.”- 

“ Ain’t you in the business now, sir ?” 

“ Now I am a mere forest thief and bushman, Levin. 
He who begins a base trade rises early to its fulness, and 
in subsequent life must be a poor wolf rejected from the 
pack, stealing where he can sneak in. Such is the kid- 
napper eking out the decayed days of the slaver ; such 
is the ruined voluptuary, living at last on the earnings of 
some shameless woman ; such am I : behold me !” 

Van Dorn’s eyes turned on Levin in their cold, heart- 
less light, and yet he blushed, as usual. 

“ You ought to be a gentleman, Captain. What made 
you break the laws so and be a bad man ?” 

“ Aymc I ayme /” mused Van Dorn, “shall I tell you? 
It was Africa. I was a high-minded youth, cool and bold, 
and with a thread of pleasure in me. I went to sea in a 
manly trade, and, fortune being slow, they whispered to 


AFRICA. 


371 


me, in the West Indies, that my clipper was just the 
thing for the slave-trade, and I made the first venture out 
of virtue, which is all the voyage. In Africa I fell a prey 
to the voluptuous life a white man leads there, to which 
the very missionaries are not always exceptions. Young, 
pale, gentle, graceful, brave, my blushes instant as my 
passions, the ceaseless intrigue of that hot climate circled 
around me like a dance in the harem around the young 
intruder : I forgot my native land and every obligation 
in it ; I was enslaved by Africa to its swooning joys ; I 
went there like the serpent and was stung by the woman.” 

“Ain’t they all right black and ugly in Africa, Cap- 
tain ?” 

“ The world has not the equals of Senegambia for 
beauty,” said Van Dorn. “ The Fullah beauties are often 
almost white, and the black admixture is no more than 
varnish on the maple -tree. And even here, my lad, 
where civilization builds a wall of social fire around the 
slave, you often mark the idolatry of the white head to 
captive Africa.” 

“ Did you make money ?” 

“ For some years I did, plenty of it ; but degradation 
in the midst of pleasure weighed down my spirits. The 
thing called honor had flown from over me like the heav- 
enly dove, and in its place a hundred painted birds flocked 
joyfully, the dazzling creatures of that thoughtless world. 
Oh, that I could have been born there or never have seen 
it ! At last I started home, but the world had adopted a 
new commandment, ‘ Thou shalt not trade in man.’ 
They took my ship and all its black cargo, and I came 
home naked. Then my heart was broke, and I turned 
kidnapper.” 

“ Home is the best place,” said Levin ; “ I ’spect it is, 
even if folks is pore. When Jimmy Phoebus give me a 
boat I thought I was rich as a Jew.” 

“What is that name?” asked Van Dorn. 


372 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ James Phoebus : he’s mother’s sweetheart.” 

“ Cc ce cel ” the Captain mused; “your mother lives, 
then ?” 

“Yes, sir. She’s pore, but Jimmy loves her, and the 
ghost of father feeds her.” 

“ Quedo ! a ghost? what kind of thing is that? Aunt 
Patty sees them : I never do.” 

“ It comes an’ puts sugar an’ coffee in the window, an’ 
sometimes a pair of shoes an’ a dress. Mother says it’s 
father: I guess it is.” 

“O Dios r lisped Van Dorn. “This Phcebus, is he a 
good man?” 

“ Brave as a lion, sir ; pore as any pungy captain ; the 
best friend I ever had. I hoped* mother would marry 
him, he’s been a-waitin’ fur her so long. She’s afraid 
father ain’t dead.” 

“ O hala^hala! women are such waiters; but this man 
can wait too. Is he strong ?” 

“ He come mighty nigh givin’ Joe Johnson a lickin’ last 
Sunday, sir, in Princess Anne. He hates a nigger-trader. 
Him an’ Samson Hat, a black feller, thinks as much of 
each other as two brothers.” 

“ And he gave you a boat ?” 

“Yes, sir: Joe Johnson hired it of me, but I didn’t 
know he was goin’ to run away niggers. He’s got my 
boat an’ ruined my credit, I ’spect, in Princess Anne, an’ 
what will mother do when I go to jail?” 

“ Why, this other man, Phoebus, is there to marry her 
or look after her.” 

“ Oh, Captain,” sobbed Levin, putting his hands on Van 
Dorn’s knees, and laying his orphan head there too, 
“pore Jimmy’s dead: Joe Johnson shot him.” 

The Captain did not move or speak. 

“ I’ve been a drunkard, Captain,” Levin sobbed again, 
in the confidence of a child ; “ that’s whair all our misery 
comes from. I’ve got nothin’ but my boat, an’ people 


PEACH BLUSH. 


373 

hires it to go gunnin’ an’ fishin’ and spreein’, and they 
takes liquor with ’em, an’ I drinks. God help me ; I 
never will agin, but die first !” 

“ Are you not afraid to lean on me ?” lisped Van Dorn. 

“No, sir.” 

“ I have killed people, too.” 

“ The Lord forgive you, sir; I know you won’t kill me” 

A sigh broke from the bandit’s lips, in place of his usual 
soft lisp, and was followed by a warm drop of water, as 
from the forest leaves now bathed in night, that plashed 
on Levin’s neck. 

“ O God,” a soft voice said, “ may I not die ?” 

Then Levin felt the same warm drops fall many 
times upon him, and his nature opened like the plants 
to rain. 

“ I have found a friend, Captain,” the boy spoke, after 
several minutes, but not looking up; “I feel you cry.” 

“ Chito ! chito /” lisped Van Dorn; “here is Punch 
Hall.” 

Levin raised his head, and saw nothing but an old 
house standing in the trees, with a little faint light stream- 
ing from the door, and heard the low hilarity of drinking 
men. The whole band poured out to receive Van Dorn’s 
commands. 

“One hour here to feed and rest!” Van Dorn ex- 
claimed. “ Let those sleep who can. Let any straggle 
or riot who dare !” 


Chapter XXXI. 

PEACH BLUSH. 

Judge Custis, whom we left riding out of Princess 
Anne on Sunday afternoon, kept straight north, crossed 
the bottom of Delaware in the early evening, and went to 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


374 

bed at Laurel, on Broad Creek, a few miles south of 
Cannon’s Ferry. 

At daylight he was ahorse again, scarcely stiff from his 
exertion, and feeling the rising joys of a stomach and 
brain becoming clearer than for years, of all the forms of 
alcohol. His mind had been bathed in sleep and tem- 
perance, the two great physicians, and wiped dry, like the 
feet of the Prince of sufferers, with women’s hairs. Exer- 
cise, natural to a Virginian, awakened his flowing spirits 
again, and he fancied the air grew purer as he advanced 
into the north, though there was hardly any perceptible 
change of elevation. The country grew drier, however, 
as he.turned the head springs of the great cypress swamp 
— the counterbalance of the Dismal Swamp of Virginia — 
receded from the Chesapeake waters, and approached the 
tributaries of the Atlantic. At nine o’clock he entered 
the court-house cluster of Georgetown, a little place of a 
few hundred people, pitched nearly at the centre of the 
county one generation before, or about ten years after the 
independence of the country. 

It was a level place of shingle-boarded houses, assem- 
bled around a sandy square, in which were both elm and 
Italian poplar trees ; and a double-storied wooden court- 
house was on the farther side, surrounded by little cab- 
ins for the county officers, pitched here and there, and in 
the rear was a jail of two stories, with family apartments 
below, and the dungeon window, the debtors’ room, and 
a family bedroom above ; and near the jail and court- 
house stood the whipping-post, like a dismantled pump, 
with a pillory floor some feet above the ground. 

Young maples, mulberry and tulip trees, and ailan- 
thuses grew bravely to make shade along the two streets 
which pierced the square, and the four streets which were 
parallel to its sides — pretty lanes being inserted between, 
to which the loamy gardens ran ; and, as the Judge 
stopped at the tavern near the court, he was told it was 


PEACH BLUSH. 


375 


“ returning day,” and the place would soon be filled with 
constituents assembling to hear how “ she’d gone ” — 
she , as the Judge knew well, meaning Sussex County, 
and “gone” intimating her decision expressed at the 
polls. 

“ She’s gone for Adams an’ Clayton, ain’t she, Jonathan 
Torbert ?” asked the innkeeper. 

“Yes,” spoke a plain, religious-looking man, the teller 
of the bank; “Johnny Clayton’s kept Sussex and Kent 
in line for Adams; Jeems Bayard and the McLanes 
have captured Newcastle : Clayton goes to the senate, 
Louis McLane to the cabinet, the country to the alliga- 
tors.” 

“ Hurrah for Jackson !” answered the host ; “ he suits 
me ever since he whipped the British.” 

At breakfast Judge Custis recognized a gentleman 
opposite, wearing smallclothes, and with his hair in a 
queue, who spoke without other than a passively kind ex- 
pression : 

“Judge.” 

“Ah! Chancellor!” 

The Chancellor was nearly seventy years old, wearing 
an humble, meditative, yet gracious look, as one whose 
relations to this world were those of stewardship, and 
whose nearly obsolete dress was the badge, not of world- 
ly pride, but of perished joys and contemporaries. His 
unaffected countenance seemed to say : “ I wear it be- 
cause it is useless to put off what no one else will wear, 
when presently I shall need nothing but a shroud.” 

Judge Custis looked at the meek old gentleman close- 
ly, sitting at his plate like a lay brother in some monas- 
tery or infirmary, indifferent to talk or news or affairs ; 
and the remembrance of what he had been — keen, accu- 
mulative, with youthful passions long retained, and the 
man buoyant under the judge’s guard — impressed the 
Virginian to say to himself : 


376 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“What, then, is man! At last old age asserts itself, 
and bends the brazen temple of his countenance, like 
Samson, in almost pious remorse. There sits twenty- 
five years of equity administration ; behind it, thirty years 
of jocund and various life. No newspaper shall ever re- 
cord it, because none are printed here ; he is indifferent 
to that forgetfulness and to all others, because the springs 
of life are dry in his body, and he no more enjoys.” 

“Are you travelling north, Judge Custis?” the old man 
asked, for politeness’ sake. 

“ Yes, to Dover.” 

“ There is a seat in my carriage ; you are welcome to 
it.” 

“ I will take it a part of the way, at least, to feel the 
privilege of your society, Chancellor.” 

The old man gave a slow, sidewise shalce of his head. 

“ Too late, too late,” he said, “ to flatter me. I was 
fond of it once. I have been a flatterer, too.” 

The Chancellor’s black boy was put on the Judge’s 
horse, and the two men, in a plain, country-made, light, 
square vehicle, turned the court-house corner for the 
north. As they passed the door they heard the sheriff 
knock off two slaves to a purchaser, crying : 

“Your property, sir, till they are twenty-five years of 
age.” 

“ Ha, ha 1” laughed, in a great horse laugh, a nearly 
chinless villager ; “ say till ole Patty Cannon can git 
’em !” 

The purchaser gave a cunning, self-convicted smile at 
the passing chancellor, whose look of resignation only 
deepened and grew more humble. The Judge had some 
vague recollection which moved him to change the sub- 
ject. 

“We see each other but little, Chancellor, though we 
divide the same little heritage of land. I suppose your 
people are all proud of Delaware.” 


PEACH BLUSH. 


377 


“ Yes,” said the old man ; “ being such a little adven- 
turer, a mere foundling in the band of states, our people 
have the pride of their independence. The laws are ad- 
ministered, some more farms are opened in the forest 
every year, blossoms come, and old men die and are bur- 
ied on their farms, and their bones respected a few years. 
Our history is so pastoral that we must show some tem- 
per when it is assailed, or we might let out our ignorance 
of it.” 

They rode in silence some hours through an older 
settled and more open country, with some large mill- 
ponds and a better class of farm improvements, and the 
sense of some large water near at hand was mystically felt. 

The Judge followed the old man’s eyes at one place, 
seeing that they were raised with an expression of tran- 
quil satisfaction, like aged piety, and a beautiful landscape 
of soft green marsh lay under their gaze from a slight 
elevation they had reached, showing cattle and sheep 
roving in it, tall groves where cows and horses found 
midday shade, and winding creeks, carrying sails of hid- 
den boats, as if in a magical cruise upon the velvet verd- 
ure. Haystacks and farm settlements stood Out in the 
long levels, and sailing birds speckled the air. In the 
far distance lay something like more marsh, yet also like 
the clouds. 

“ It is the Delaware Bay,” the Chancellor said. 

They soon entered a well-built little town on a naviga- 
ble creek, with a large millpond, sawmills, several ves- 
sels building on the stocks, and an air of superior vi- 
tality to anything Judge Custis had seen in Delaware. 
Here the Chancellor pointed out the late home of Sena- 
tor Clayton’s father, and, after the horses had been fed, 
they continued still northward, passing another small 
town on a creek near the marshes, and, a little beyond it, 
came to a venerable brick church, a little from the road, 
in a grove of oaks and forest trees. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


37S 

“ Here is Barrett’s chapel,” said the Chancellor ; “ cel- 
ebrated for the plotting of the campaign between Wes- 
ley’s native and English preachers for the conquest of 
America as soon as the crown had lost it.” 

They looked up over the broad-gabled, Quakerly edi- 
fice, with its broad, low ddor, high roof, double stories of 
windows, and a higher window in the gable, trim rows of 
arch-bricks over door and windows, and belt masonry ; 
and heard the tall trees hush it to sleep like a baby left 
to them. Nearly fifty feet square, and probably fifty 
years old, it looked to be good for another hundred 
years. 

“ My family in Accomac was harsh with the Metho- 
dists through a mistaken conservatism,” Judge Custis 
said. “ They are a good people ; they se,em to suit this 
peninsula like the peach-tree.” 

A small funeral procession was turning into Barrett’s 
chapel, and the Chancellor interrogated one of the more 
indifferent followers as to the dead person. Having men- 
tioned the name, the citizen said : 

“ His death was mysterious. He was a Methodist and 
a good man, but it seems that avarice was gnawing his 
principles away. A slave boy, soon to become free by 
law, disappeared from his possession, and he gave it out 
that the boy had run away. But suddenly our neighbor 
began to drink and to display money, and they say he 
had the boy kidnapped. He died like one with an at- 
tack of despair.” 

As they turned again northward, in the genial after- 
noon, Judge Custis said : 

“ What a stigma on both sides, Chancellor, is this kid- 
napping!” 

The old man meekly looked down and did not reply. 
Judge Custis, feeling that there was some sensitiveness on 
this and kindred subjects, yet why he could not recollect, 
continued, under the impulse of his feelings : 


Peach blush. 


379 


“The night before I left Princess Anne, Joe Johnson, 
one of your worst kidnappers, boldly came to my house 
for lodging. Why I let him stay there is a subject of 
wonder and contempt to myself. But there he was, per- 
haps when I came away.” 

“ Not a prudent thing to permit,” the old man groaned 

“ I knew his wife was the widow of a gallows’ bird, one 
Brereton — the name is Yankee. He was hanged for 
highway robbery.” 

A muffled sound escaped the sober old gentleman of 
Delaware. 

“ You should remember the murder, Chancellor. It 
happened in this state. This Brereton killed a slave- 
buyer for what he brought here upon his person to buy 
the kidnapped free people and apprentice-slaves. Brere- 
ton was the son-in-law of Patty Cannon, that infamous 
pander between Delaware and the South.” 

The old Chancellor looked up. 

“ I wish to anticipate you,” he said, “ in what you might 
further say with truth, but perhaps do not fully know. 
The murderer, Brereton, was the son-in-law of Patty Can- 
non, it is true ; but he was also the brother-in-law of my- 
self.” 

“Impossible!” Judge Custis said. 

“ Yes, sir ; I married his sister.” 

The old Chancellor again turned his eyes to the 
ground. 

“Great heavens!” exclaimed the Judge; “how many 
curious things can be in such a little state !” 

It was in the middle of the afternoon that Judge Dan- 
iel Custis rode into a small town on an undulating plain, 
around two sides of which, at hardly half a mile distance, 
ran a creek through a pretty wooded valley, and a third 
side was bounded by a branch of the same creek, all 
winding through copse, splutter-dock, lotus-flower, and 
marsh to the Delaware Bay. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


380 

At the centre of the town, on the swell or crest of al- 
luvial soil, of a light sandy loam foundation, an oblong 
public square, divided by a north and south street, con- 
tained the principal dwellings of the place, one of 
which was the Delaware State Capitol, a red-brick build- 
ing, a little older than the American Constitution, with 
a bell-crowned cupola above its centre, and thence could 
be seen the Delaware Bay. 

Near the state-house stood the whipping-post in the 
corner, humble as a hitching-post, and the brick jail hid 
out of the way there also, like an unpresentable servant 
ever cringing near his master’s company. Various build- 
ings, generally antique, surrounded this prim, Quakerly 
square, some brick, and with low portals, others smart, 
and remodelled to suit the times ; some wpre mere wood- 
en offices or huts, with long dormers falling from the roof- 
ridge nearly to the eaves, like a dingy feather from a hat- 
crown, with a jewel in the end ; and one was an old 
steep-roofed hotel, painted yellow, with a long, lounging 
side. 

At diagonal corners of this square, as far apart as its 
space would permit, two venerable doctors’ homes still 
stood, which had given more repute to Delaware’s little 
capital than its jurists or statesmen, — the former resi- 
dence of Sykes the surgeon and Miller the pathologist 
and writer. 

It was at the former of these houses, a many-windowed, 
tall, side-fronting house of plastered brick, with side office 
and centre door, that Judge Custis stopped and hitched 
his horse to a rack near the state-house adjoining. The 
sound of twittering birds fell from the large elms, willows, 
and maples on the square, and Custis could see the rob- 
ins running in the grass. 

From the door of the two-storied side office the sound 
of a violin came tenderly, and the Judge waited until the 
tune was done, when loud exclamations of pleasure, the 


PEACH BLUSH. 381 

clapping of hands, and the stamping of feet, showed that 
the fiddler was not alone. 

Presenting himself at the door, Judge Custis was imme- 
diately confronted by a large, tall man, fully six feet high, 
with a strong countenance and sandy hair, who carried 
the fiddle and bow in his hand, and with the other hand 
seized Judge Custis almost affectionately, and drew him 
in, crying : 

“ Why, how is my old friend ? Goy ! how does he do ? 
Who could have expected you on this simple occasion ? 
Sit down there and take my own chair ! Not that little 
one — no, the big easy-chair for my old friend ! Goy !” 

As Judge Custis cast his eye around, to note the com- 
pany, the demonstrative host, with a flash of his gray-blue 
eyes, whispered, 

“ Who is he ? who is he ?” 

“ A Custis,” whispered a person hardly the better off 
for his drams; “ I reckon he is, by the lips and skin.” 

“Goy!” rapidly spoke the fiddler. “Friend Custis — 
I know my heart does not deceive me ! — let me introduce 
you to the very essence of grand old little Delaware: 
here is Bob Frame, the ardent spirit of our bar ; this is 
James Bayard, our misguided Democratic favorite; here 
is Charley Marim and Secretary Harrington, and my es- 
teemed friend Senator Ridgely, and my cousin, Chief- 
justice Clayton. We are all here, and all honored by 
such a rare guest. Goy !” 

As the Judge went through the hand-shaking process, 
the tall, well-fed host stooped to the convivial person 
again, and, with his hand to the side of his mouth, and 
an air of solemn cunning, whispered : 

“Where from ?” 

“ Accomac, or Somerset, I reckon,” muttered the other. 

“ Now,” exclaimed the host, taking both of Judge Cus- 
tis’s hands, “how do our dear friends all get along in 
Somerset and Accomac ? Where do you call home now, 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


382 

Friend Custis? How are our old friends Spence and 
Upshur, and Polk and Franklin and Harry Wise? Goy ! 
how I love our neighbors below.” 

There was a strength of articulation and physical em- 
phasis in the speaker that the Judge noted at once, and 
it was attended with a beaming of the eyes and a fine 
fortitude of the large jaws that made him nearly mag- 
netic. 

“ And this is John M. Clayton ?” said the Judge. “ We 
are not so far off that we have not fully heard of you. 
And now, since I belong to a numerous family, let me 
identify myself, Clayton, as Daniel Custis, late Judge on 
the Eastern Shore.” 

“Judge Custis! Daniel Custis! Friends,” looking 
around, “ what an honor! Think of it! The eminent 
American manufacturer ! The creator of our industries ! 
The friend of Mr. Clay and the home policy ! Bayard, 
you need not shake your head ! Ridgely, pardon my 
patriotic enthusiasm ! Look at a man , my friends, at 
last ! Goy !” 

As the Judge listened to various affirmations of wel- 
come, Mr. Clayton, with one eye winked and the other 
resting on Lawyer Frame, the ardent spirit of the bar, 
made the motion with his lips : 

“ Cambridge ?” 

“No; Princess Anne.” 

“ And dear old Princess Anne, how does she fare ?” — 
he had again turned to the Judge — “how is the little 
river Wicomico — no, I mean Manokin — how does it flow ? 
Does it flow benevolently ? Does it abound in the best 
oysters I ever tasted ? in forrapin, too ? How is she 
now ? Goy !” 

“ Are you on your way north, Brother Custis, or going 
home ?” the keen, black-eyed Chief-justice asked. 

“ No, my journey is ended. I came to Dover to be ac- 
quainted with Mr. Clayton.” 


PEACH BLUSH. 


383 

“ Aunt Braner. Hyo ! Come yer, Aunt Braner !” the 
host cried loudly, and an old colored woman came in, 
closely followed by some of her grandchildren, who stood, 
gazing, at the door. “ Take this gentleman and give him 
the best room in my house. The best ain’t good enough 
for him ! Take him right up and give him water and 
make your son bresh him, and we’ll send him the best 
julep in Kent County. Goy !” 

“ De bes’ room was Miss Sally’s, Mr. Clayton,” the old 
woman answered. 

A sudden change came over the highly prompt and 
sanguine face of the host ; he hesitated, wandered in the 
eyes, and caught himself on the words : 

“No, give him the Speaker Chew room: that’ll suit 
him best.” 

As the Judge followed the servant out, the young Sen- 
ator emptied his mouth of a large piece of tobacco into 
a monster spittoon that a blind man could hardly miss, 
and, with a face still long and silent, and much at vari- 
ance with his previous spontaneity, he absently in- 
quired : 

“ What can he want ? what can he want ?” 

One of the small negro children had meantime toddled 
in at the door, and, with large, liquid eyes in its solemn, 
desirous face, laid hands on the fiddle and looked up at 
Mr. Clayton. 

“ Bless the little child !” he suddenly said. “ Wants a 
tune? Well!” 

Placing himself in a large chair, the young Senator 
tilted it back till his hard, squarish head rested against 
the mantel, and he felt along the strings almost purpose- 
lessly, till the plaintive air came forth : 

“Ye banks and braes o’ bonnie Doon ! 

How can ye bloom so fair ? 

How can ye chant, ye little birds, 

And I so full of care ? 


3 8 4 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


Thou’lt break my heart, thou bonnie bird, 

That sings beside thy mate ; 

For so I sat, and so I sang, 

And wist not of my fate.” 

He closed his eyes on the strains, and a thickening at 
his throat, and movement of his broad, athletic chest, as 
he continued the air, showed that he was inwardly labor- 
ing with some strong emotion. 

His cousin, the Chief-justice, made a signal with his 
hat, and one by one the sitters stole out into the square 
noiselessly, and went their ways, leaving the young man 
playing on, with the negro child at his knee, leaning there 
as if to spy out the living voice in his violin. 

Other children came to the door — white, children from 
the square, black children from the garden — and some 
ventured a little way in to hear the tender wooing of 
the sympathetic strings. He moved his bow mechan- 
ically, but the music sprang forth as if it knew its sis- 
ter, Grief, was waiting on the chords. At last a bolder 
child than the rest came and pushed his elbow and 
said, 

“ Papa !” 

“ My boy, my dear boy !” the fiddler cried, as tears 
streamed down his cheeks, and he lifted the lad to his 
heart and kissed him. 

Judge Custis, though no word passed upon the subject, 
saw the solitary canker at the Senator’s heart — his wife’s 
dead form in the old Presbyterian kirk-yard. 

It w r as soon apparent to Judge Custis, from this and 
other silent things, that a light - hearted, affectionate, 
strong, yet womanly, engine of energy constituted the 
young Delaware lawyer-politician. Keen, cunning, im- 
pulsive, hopeful, his feet provincial, his head among the 
birds, he combined facility and earnestness in almost 
mercurial relations to each other, and the Judge saw that 
these must constitute a remarkable jury lawyer. 


PEACH BLUSH. 


385 

His face was shaven smooth ; his throat and chin 
showed an early tendency to flesh ; the poise of his head 
and thoughtful darting of his eyes and slight aqualinity 
of his nose indicated one who loved mental action and 
competition, yet drew that love from a great, healthy 
body that had to be watched lest it relapse into indo- 
lence. The loss of his wife so soon after marriage had 
been followed by nearly complete indifference to women, 
and he had made politics his only consolation and mis- 
tress, harnessing her like a young mare with his old road- 
ster of the law, and driving them together in the slender 
confines of his principality, and then locking the law up 
among his office students to drive politics into the na- 
tional arena at Washington. 

“ You require to be very neighborly, Clayton, in a small 
bailiwick like this?” the Judge inquired, as they strolled 
along the square in the soft evening. 

“ We have the best people in the world in Delaware, 
friend Custis : few traders, little law, scarcely any vio- 
lence, and they are easy to please ; but it is a high of- 
fence in this state not to be what is called ‘ a clever man.’ 
You must stop, whatever.be your errand, and smile and 
inquire of every man at his gate for every individual mem- 
ber of his household. The time lost in such kind, trifling 
intercourse is in the aggregate immense. But, Goy ! I do 
love these people.” 

“ It seems to me that you encourage that enaction.” 

“Well, I do. As an electioneerer, I can get away with 
any of ’em. Goy ! Why, Jim Whitecar, Lord bless your 
dear soul !” — this addressed to a thick-set, sandy, uncer- 
tain-looking man who was about retreating into the Cap- 
itol Tavern — “what brings you to town, Jim?” 

“It’s a free country, I reckon,” exclaimed the suspi- 
cious-looking man. 

“Goy! that’s so, Jimmy. We’re all glad to see you 
in Dover behaving of yourself, Jim. Now don’t give me 

25 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


386 

any trouble this year, friend Jimmy. Behave yourself, and 
be an honor to your good parents that I think so much 
of. Oblige me, now 1 ” 

As they turned to cross the middle of the square, Clay- 
ton said : 

“ I’ll have him at that whipping-post, hugging of it, one 
of these days.” 

“ What is he ?” 

“ A kidnapper down here in Sockum, and a bad 
one : a dangerous fellow, too. I hear he says if I ever 
push him to the extremity of his co-laborer, Joe John- 
son — whom I sent to the post and then saved from 
cropping — that he’ll kill me. Goy !” — Mr. Clayton 
looked around a trifle apprehensively — I’m ready for 
him.” 

“ Delaware kidnapping is a great institution,” Custis 
said. 

“ It has an antiquity and extent you would hardly be- 
lieve, friend Custis. Long before our independence, in 
the year 1760, the statutes of Delaware had to provide 
against it. Our laws have never permitted the domestic 
slave-trade with other states.” 

The little place seemed to have a good society, and the 
beauty of the young girls sitting at the doors or walking 
in the evening showed something of the florid North Eu- 
rope skins, Batavian eyes, and rotund Dutch or Quaker 
figures. 

As they returned to the public square, a room in the 
tavern, almost brilliantly lighted for that day of candles, 
displayed its windows to the gaze of Clayton, who ex- 
claimed : 

“Goy! that is surely John Randel, Junior.” 

“ That distinguished engineer ?” observed his visitor, 
who had been waiting all the evening to broach the sub- 
ject of his errand. “I have the greatest admiration of 
him. Shall we call on him ?” 


PEACH BLUSH. 


387 

“ Why, yes, yes,” answered Clayton, dubiously ; “ I’m 
not afraid of him. I — goy ! I owe him nothing. He is 
such a litigious fellow, though; so persistent with it ; bar- 
ratry >, champetry , mad incorrigibility : he’s the wildest man 
of genius alive. But come on !” 

Knocking at a door on the second floor, a sharp, prompt 
reply came out : 

“ Come !” 

A middle-sized man, with a large head and broad shoul- 
ders, and cloth leggings, buttoned to above his knee, sat 
in a nearly naked, carpetless room, writing, his table sur- 
rounded by burning wax candles, and his countenance 
was proud and intense. Mr. Clayton rushed upon him 
and seized his hand : 

“ How is my friend Randel ? The indefatigable liti- 
gant, the brilliant engineer, to whom ideas, goy ! are 
like persimmons on the tree, abundant, but seldom ripe, 
and only good when frosted. How is he now and what 
is he at ?” 

“ Stand there,” spoke the engineer, “and took at me 
while I read the sentence I was finishing upon John Mid- 
dleton Clayton of Delaware.” 

“Go it, Randel ! Now, Custis, he’ll put a wick in me 
and just set me afire. Goy !” 

“ ‘ It is the curse of lawyers,’ ” the unrelaxing stranger 
read, “ ‘ to let their judgment for hire, from early manhood, 
to easy clients, or to suppress it in the cringing necessi- 
ties of popular politics : hence that residue and fruit of 
all talents, the honest conviction of a man’s bravest sa- 
gacity, perishes in lawyers’ souls ere half their powers 
are fledged : they-become the registers of other men, they 
think no more than wax.’ ” 

Here Mr. Randel blew out one of the candles. The 
illustration was cogent. Mr. Clayton lighted it again with 
another candle. 

“ There’s method in his madness, Custis,” he said, with 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


338 

a wink. “ Let me introduce my great friend to you, Ran- 
del ?” ' 

“ Stop there,” the engineer repeated, sternly, “ till I have 
read my sentence. ‘ Seldom it is that a lawyer of useful 
parts, in a community as detached and pastoral as the 
State of Delaware, has a cause appealing to his manli- 
ness, his genius, and his avarice, like this of John Randel, 
Junior, civil engineer! No equal public work will prob- 
ably be built in the State of Delaware during the lifetime 
of the said Clayton. No fee he can earn in his native 
state will ever have been the reward of a lawyer there 
like his who shall be successful with the suit of John 
Randel, Junior, against the Canal Company. No princi- 
ple is better worth a great lawyer’s vindication than that 
these corporations, in their infancy, shall not trample 
upon the private rights of a gentleman, and treat his 
scholarship and services like the labor of a slave.’ ” 

“Well said and highly thought,” interposed Judge 
Custis. 

“‘The said Clayton,’” continued John Randel, still 
reading, “ ‘ refuses the aid of his abilities to a stranger 
and a gentleman inhospitably treated in the State of Del- 
aware.’ ” 

“ No, no,” cried Clayton ; “ that is a charge against me 
I will not permit.” 

“ ‘ The said Clayton,” ’ read Randel, inflexibly, “ ‘ with 
the possibilities of light, riches, and honor for himself, 
and justice for a fellow-man, chooses cowardice, medioc- 
rity — and darkness. He extinguishes my hopes and 
his.’ ” 

With this, Mr. Randel, by a singular fanning of his 
hands and waft of his breath, put out all the candles at 
once and left the whole room in darkness. 

Judge Custis was the first to speak after this extraordi- 
nary illustration : 

“ Clayton, I believe he has a good case.” 


PEACH BLUSH. 


389 

“ That is not the point now,” Mr. Clayton said, with 
rising spirit and emphasis. “The point now is, ‘ Am I 
guilty of inhospitality ?’ Goy ! that touches me as a Del- 
awarean, and is a high offence in this little state. It is 
true that this suitor is a stranger. He comes to me with 
an introduction from my brilliant young friend, Mr. Sew- 
ard, of New York, who vouches for him. But the corpo- 
ration he menaces is also entitled to hospitality : it is, in 
the main, Philadelphia capital. Girard himself, that fru- 
gal yet useful citizen, is one of its promoters. My own 
state, and Maryland, too, have interests in this work. Is 
it the part of hospitality to be taking advantage of our 
small interposing geography, and laying by the heels, 
through our local courts, a young, struggling, and, indeed, 
national undertaking?” 

“ Let the courts of your state, which are pure, decide 
between us,” said John Randel, Junior, relighting the can- 
dles with his tinder-box. 

“ No lawyer ought to refuse the trial of such a public 
cause because of any state scruples,” Judge Custis put 
in, in his grandest way. “ That is not national ; it is not 
Whig, Brother Clayton.” The Judge here gave his entire 
family power to his facial energy, and expressed the Vir- 
ginian and patrician in his treatment of the Delaware 
bourgeois and plebeian. “ Granted that this corporation 
is young and untried : let it be disciplined in time, that it 
may avoid more expensive mistakes in the future. No 
cause, to a true lawyer, is like a human cause ; the time 
may come when the talent of the American bar will be 
the parasite of corporations and monopolists, but it is 
too early for that degradation for you and me, Senator 
Clayton. The rights of a man involve all progress ; 
progress, indeed, is for man, not man for progress. As 
a son of Maryland, if he came helpless and penniless to 
me, I would not let this gentleman be sacrificed.” 

“ If I were a rich man, Clayton would take my case,” 


39 ° 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


the engineer said ; “ my poverty is my disqualification in 
his eyes.” 

He again essayed, in a dramatic way, to fan out the 
candles, but his breath failed him; his hands became 
limp, and then hastily covered his eyes, and he sank to 
the table with a groan, and put his head upon it convul- 
sively. 

“ Gentlemen,” he uttered, in a voice touching by its 
distress, “ oh ! gentlemen, professional life — my art — is, 
indeed, a tragedy.” 

The easy sensibilities of Judge Custis were at once 
moved. Senator Clayton, looking from one to the other 
in nervous indecision, seeing Custis’s dewy eyes, and 
Randel’s proud breaking down, was himself carried away, 
and shouted : 

“ I goy ! This is a conspiracy. But, Randel, Til take 
your case ; I can’t see a man cry. Goy !” 

As they all arose sympathetically and shook hands, a 
knock came on the door, and there was a call for Mr. 
Clayton. He returned in a few minutes, with a rather 
grim countenance, and said : 

“Randel, I have just declined a big round retaining- 
fee to defend the very suit your tears and Brother Custis’s 
have persuaded me to prosecute. But, goy ! a tear always 
robbed me of a dollar.” 

“ This sympathy to-day will make you an independent 
man for life,” exclaimed the engineer. 

“I have done Milburn’s first errand right,” Judge Cus- 
tis thought; “five minutes’ delay would have been fatal.” 


GARTER-SNAKES. 


39 * 


Chapter XXXII. 

GARTER-SNAKES. 

At Princess Anne Vesta had moved her husband to 
Teackle Hall, and he occupied her father’s room and 
seemed to be growing better, though the doctor said that 
he had best be sent to the hills somewhere. 

The free woman, Mary, whom Jimmy Phoebus sent to 
Vesta, had arrived very opportunely, and took Aunt Hom- 
iny’s place in the kitchen, where all the children’s echoes 
were gone, the poor woman’s own bereavement thrilling 
the ears of Virgie, Roxy, and Vesta herself ; but, alas ! her 
tale was not legal testimony, because she was a little black. 

Jack Wonnell had found unexpected favor in Meshach 
Milburn’s eyes, and was appointed to sleep in the store 
and watch it; and there Roxy came down in the twi- 
lights, and, with pity more than affection, heard him 
weave the illusion of his love for her, willing to be amused 
by it, because it was so sincere with him ; for Jack was 
all lover, and meek and artful, bold and domestic, soft 
and outlawed, as the houseless Thomas cat that makes 
highways of the fences, and wooes the demurest kitten 
forth by the magic of his purring. 

“ Roxy,” said Jack, “ I’m a-goin’ to git you free, gal, fur 
I ’spect Meshach Milburn will give me a pile o’ money 
fur a-watchin’ of the sto’. Then we’ll go to Canaday, 
whar, I hearn tell, color ain’t no pizen, an’ we’ll love like 
the white doves an’ the brown, that both makes the same 
coo, so happy they is.” 

“Jack,” said the soft-eyed, pitying maid, “you’re a pore 
foolish fellow, but I like to hear you talk. I reckon there 
is no harm in you. Virgie is in love, too, with a white 
man, but you mustn’t breathe it.” 


392 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“Never,” said Jack, making solemn motions with his 
eyes, and cuddling closer in dead earnest of sympathy. 
“ Hope I may die ! Can’t tell, to save my life ! Who-oop ! 
Tell me, Roxy !” 

“ Pore sister Virgie, she was made to love, and, though 
it’s hopeless, I think she loves Mr. Tilghman, our minis- 
ter, because he loved Miss Vesty once, and Virgie wor- 
ships Miss Vesty like her sister.” 

******* 

Vesta told the story of Mary, the free woman, to her 
husband, who listened closely and said : 

“ I know of but one thing, my darling, that will make 
such ignorance and cruelty fade out in the forests of this 
peninsula : an iron road. A new thing, 'called the rail- 
road-engine, has just been made by an Englishman, one 
George Stephenson, and a specimen of it has been sent 
to New York, where I have had it examined. The er- 
rand your father went to do for me, he has done well. I 
shall send him to Annapolis next, to get a charter for a 
railroad up this peninsula that will pass inside the line 
of Maryland, and penetrate every kidnapping settlement 
hidden there, and light, intercourse, and law shall exter- 
minate such barracoons as Johnson’s.” 

Vesta was glad to hear her father praised by her hus- 
band, and hopes rekindled of some happier family reun- 
ion, when she should feel the heartache die within her 
that now raged intermittently during her vestal honey- 
moon. A letter came on the fourth day which dashed 
these hopes to the ground, and it was as follows : 


“Dorchester County, Md., October — , 1829. 

“ Darling Niece , — Idol of my heart, let me begin by entreating you 
to take a conservative course when I break the sad intelligence to 
you of the death of my dear^ sister, Lucy, at Cambridge, yesterday, of 
the heart disease. She was the star of the house of McLane. She 
is gone. 4 Vengeance is mine,’ saith the Lord, and I shall take a 
conservative though consistent course on the parties who have inflict- 


GARTER-SNAKES. 393 

ed this injury upon you, my dear niece, and upon your calm and col- 
lected, if stricken, uncle. 

“ ‘ The Lord moves in a mysterious way, his wonders to perform,* 
and his humble instruments require only to be inflexible atid conserv- 
ative to do all things well. Be assured that righteousness shall be 
done upon the adversaries of our family, and that right speedily. My 
own grief is composed in the satisfaction I shall take, and the assurance 
that your sainted mother is where the wicked cease from troubling. 

“ The financial arrangements of my dear sister were of the most con- 
servative and high-toned character, as was to have been expected of her. 

“You may be desirous, my outraged, but, I hope, still spirited , 
idol, to hear the particulars of Lucy’s death. She did not reach 
Cambridge till near midnight, having made the long journey from 
Princess Anne without fitting companions, and, in the excited state 
of her feelings, after she left Vienna in the evening, a depression of 
the spirits, accompanied by a fluttering of the heart, came on, and 
rapidly increased, and, by the time she arrived at our relatives’, she 
was nearly dead with nervous apprehension and weakness. On see- 
ing me, she revived sufficiently to make her will in the most sisterly 
and conservative manner. 

“ A physician was procured, but he pronounced her system so de- 
bilitated and detoned as hardly probable to outride the shock, the 
nervous centres being depressed and atrophy setting in. 

“ She talked incessantly about the Entailed Hat , and said it was a 
permanent shadow and weight upon your heart, and made me prom- 
ise to mash it, if it could conservatively be done. 

“ I read to my dear sister from the Book of Books , and tried to 
compose her feelings, but she broke out ever and anon, ‘ Oh, Brother 
Allan ! to think I have raised children to be bought and sold, and 
married to foresters and trash.’ She was deeply sensitive as to 
what would be said about it in Baltimore. 

“Just before she died, she said, * Do not bury me at Princess Anne, 
where that fiend can come near me with his frightful Hat ! Take 
me to Baltimore, where there are no bog-ores, nor old family chattels, 
to disturb the respectability of death. Apologize for my daughter, 
and do her justice .’ 

“ And so this grand woman died, in the confidence of a blessed 
immortality, leaving us to vindicate her motives and continue her 
conservative course, and to meet at her funeral next Friday, at our 
church in Baltimore, where Rev. John Breckenridge will preach the 
funeral sermon over this murdered saint. 

“ With conservative, yet proud, grief, 

“ Affectionately, your uncle, 

“Allan McLane.” 


394 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“Oh, sir !” Vesta exclaimed, turning blindly towards 
her husband ; “ mother is dead. Where can I turn ?” 

“Where but to me, poor soul 1” Milburn replied, know- 
ing nothing of Mrs. Custis’s late feelings against him. 
“ Your father shall be notified, and I am able to attend 
the funeral with you.” 

“ It is in Baltimore,” Vesta sobbed. 

“Well, honey, there I am ordered by the doctor to go, 
and get above the line of malaria, in the hills. I can 
make the effort now.” 

Her grief and loneliness deprived her of the will to re- 
fuse him. Roxy was selected to be her mistress’s maid 
upon the journey, and William Tilghman and Rhoda Hol- 
land were to take them in the family carriage down to 
Whitehaven landing for the evening steamer. 

Jack Wonnell, in officious zeal to be useful, gathered 
flowers, and hung around Teackle Hall to run errands ; 
and, in order not to exasperate Vesta’s husband, appeared 
bareheaded as the party set off, Milburn’s hat-box being 
one of the articles of travel, and Milburn vouchsafing 
these words to Jack : 

“ There is a dollar for you, Mr. Wonnell. I rely upon 
you to watch my old store and conduct yourself like a 
man.” 

“I’ll do it,” answered Jack, grinning and blushing; 
“ hope I may die ! Good-bye, Miss Vesty. Purty Roxy, 
don’t you forgit me ’way off thair in Balt’mer. I’ll teach 
Tom to sing your name befo’ you ever see me agin.” 

He waved his arms, with real tears dimming his vision, 
and Roxy affected to shed some tears also, as she waved 
good-bye to Virgie, whose eyes were turned with wistful 
pain upon the beautiful face of her mistress receding 
down the vista. Vesta threw her a kiss and reclined her 
head upon her husband’s shoulder. 

That evening, an hour before the carriage was to re- 
turn, Virgie and the free woman, Mary, walked together 


GARTER-SNAKES. 


395 

down to Milburn’s store, to see if Jack Wonnell was on 
the watch. As they trode in the soft grass and sand un- 
der the old storehouse they saw the bell-crowned hat — a 
new one, brought from the ancient stock that very day — 
shining glossily on WonnelPs high, eccentric head, as he 
sat in the hollow window of the old storehouse and talked 
to the mocking-bird, which he was feeding with a clam- 
shell full of boiled potato and egg, and some blue 
haws. 

“Tom, say ‘Roxy,’ an’ I’ll give ye some, Tommy! 
Now, boy ! ‘ Roxy, Roxy, purty Roxy ! purty Roxy ! Poor 
ole Jack! poor ole Jack !’ ” 

The bird flew around Wonnell’s head, biting at the hat 
which stood in such elegant irrelevance to the remainder 
of his dress, and cried, “ Meshach, he ! he ! he ! Vesty, 
she ! Vesty, Meshach! Vesty, Meshach!” but said noth- 
ing the village vagrant would teach it. He showed the 
patience idleness can well afford, and, feeding it a little, 
or withholding the food awhile, continued to plead and 
teach : 

“‘Roxy, Roxy, purty Roxy! Poor, pore Jack! pore 
Jack !’ Now, Tom, say ‘ Roxy, Roxy, pore Jack !’ ” 

The bird flew and struck, and sang a little, very nig- . 
gardly, and so, as the lights in the west sank and faded, 
the shiftless lover continued in vain to seek to give the 
bird one note more than the magician, his master, had 
taught. 

The stars modestly appeared in the soft heavens, and 
Princess Anne gathered its roofs together like a camp of 
camels in the desert, and, with an occasional bleat or 
bark or human sound, seemed dozing out the soft fall 
night, absorbed, perhaps, in the spreading news of Mrs. 
Custis’s death and Vesta’s wedding-journey, that had to 
be taken at last. 

“ Miss Virgie,” said the woman Mary — ten years her 
senior, but comely still — “ have you ever loved like me ? 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


396 

Oh, I had a kind husband, and, helpless as I was, I tried 
to love once more. Maybe it was a sin.” 

“ I love my mistress as if she was myself,” Virgie said ; 
“ I feel as if, in heaven, before we came here, I was with 
her, Mary ! I love her father, too, as if he was not my 
master, but my friend. Oh, how I love them all ! But 
what can I do to show my love — poor naked slave that I 
am ? They say they will soon set me free. Mary, how 
do people feel when they are free ?” 

“ They don’t appreciate it,” sighed Mary. “ They go 
and put themselves in captivity again, like selfish things : 
they falls in love.” 

“ But to love and be free !” Virgie said, her bosom 
glowing in the thought till her rich eyes deemed to shed 
warmth and starlight on her companion’s face ; “ to give 
your own free love to some one and feel him grateful for 
it : what a gift and what a joy is that ! He might be 
thankful for it, and, seeing how pure it was, he might re- 
spect me.” 

“ Who is it, Virgie ?” Mary said. 

“ Whoever would love me like a white girl !” the ardent 
slave softly exclaimed. “ It must be some one who does 
not despise me. I hear Miss Vesta’s beau, Master Will- 
iam, read the beautiful service, with his sweet, submissive 
face, and I think to myself, ‘ How freely he might have 
my heart to comfort his if he would take it like a gentle- 
man !’ I would be his slave to make him happy, if he 
could love me purely, like my mother ! Oh, my mother, 
whose name I do not know ! where is the tie that fastens 
me to heaven ? Did my father love me ?” 

“Pore Jack! pore Jack! Sing ‘ Roxy, Roxy, Roxy,’ 
Tom !” coaxed Wonnell above to the sleepy bird. 

“Whoever was your father, Virgie, your mother’s love 
for you was pure. God makes the wickedest love their 
children, because he is the Father to all the fatherless.” 

“ Oh 1 could my own father have brought me into the 


GARTER-SNAKES. 


397 


world and hated me ?” Virgie said. “ They say I am al- 
most beautiful. Will he who gave me life never call me 
his, and say , 4 My daughter, come to my respect, rest on 
my heart, and take my name ’ ?” 

“ Poor Virgie !” sighed Mary ; 44 remember we are 
black ! We hardly ever have fathers : they is for white 
people.” 

“ Dog my hide !” mumbled Wonnell, above, “ ef a bird 
ain’t a perwerse critter. Purty Roxy won’t think I’m 
smart a bit ef I can’t make Tom say ‘ Roxy, Roxy, Roxy ! 
Pore Jack !’ ” 

44 I am almost white,” Virgie continued ; “ I want to be 
all white. Why can’t I be so ? The Lord knows my 
heart is white, and full of holy, unselfish love.” 

44 Pore chile !” Mary said ; 44 we shall all be washed 
and made white in the Lamb’s blood, Virgie. That’s 
where your soul pints you to, dear young lady. I know 
it ain’t pride and rebellion in you : it’s like I’m looking 
at my baby, white as snow to me and God now.” 

44 Hush !” said Virgie, trembling , 44 what voice is that ?” 

There was an old willow-tree in a recessed spot at the 
end of the store, and by it were two sheds or small build- 
ings, now disused, into one of which, with a door low to 
the ground, Mary drew Virgie, and they listened to a low 
voice saying, 

44 Dave, air your pops well slugged ?” 

44 Yes, Mars Joe.” 

44 Allan McLane pays fur the job?” 

44 Yes, Mars Joe.” 

44 You can’t mistake him, Dave. No shap is worn like 
that nowadays. Look only fur his headpiece, and aim 
well !” 

44 Yes, Mars Joe.” 

44 Fur me,” continued the other voice , 44 I’ll go right to 
the tavern an’ prove an alibi. My lay is to take the 
house gal that old Gripefist’s young wife thinks so much 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


398 

of. I’ll snake her out to-night. She’s the property of 
Allan McLane, left him in his sister’s will. They found 
on her body the paper giving the gal to the dead woman 
only two days before. She’s Allan’s to-morrow, but to- 
night she’s mine !” 

A sensual, sucking, chuckling sound, like a kiss made 
upon the back of his own hand, followed this significant 
threat; and Mary, placing her hand over the sinking 
slave girl’s mouth, held her motionless. 

“ Tommy, Tommy ! sing 1 Roxy, Roxy, Roxy ! Pore 
Jack ! Pore Jack !’ Sing, Tommy, sing !” 

“ There” whispered the white man, softly, and was 
gone. 

Mary breathed only the words to Yirgie, “Kidnap- 
pers — come !” and they glided from the old tenement 
unobserved, and entered the copse along the stream. 

“Pore Jack! Pore Jack! His leetle Roxy’s gone 
away. Pore Jack! Roxy! Roxy! Roxy !” the mourner 
at the window above chattered sleepily to the nodding 
bird. 

The negro at the corner of the old warehouse, half 
covered by the willow’s shade, peered up with bloodshot- 
ten eyes to distinguish the covering on the bird-tamer’s 
head. 

He saw Jack Wonnell sitting backward on the win- 
dow-frame, swaying in and out, as he lazily tempted the 
mocking-bird to sing, and once the bell-crown hat, so 
singular to view, came in full relief against the gray sky. 

“ It’s ole Meshach,” said the negro, silently, with des- 
perate eyes. “ I hoped it wasn’t. Dar is de hat, sho !” 

He cocked his huge horse-pistol, and took aim directly 
from below. 

“ Pore Jack ! Pore Jack ! I reckon Roxy won’t have 
pore Jack, caze Tommy won’t sing. Sing, Tommy, little 
Roxy’s pet : 1 Pore Jack ! Pore — ’ ” 

The great horse-pistol boomed on the night, and in the 


GARTER-SNAKES. 399 

smoke the negro rushed into the bush and sought the 
fields. 

Down from his seat in the window-sill the witless vil- 
lager came backward, all bestrewn, measuring his body 
in the sand, where he lay, silent as the other shadows, 
with his arms extended in the frenzy of death, and his 
mouth wide open and flowing blood. 

J ack Wonnell had paid the penalty of being out of fashion . 

The mocking-bird, aroused by the loud report, leaped 
into the empty window-sill to seek his tutor, and set up 
the lesson he had learned too late : 

“Poor Jack! Poor Jack! Roxy! Roxy! Roxy!” 
came screaming on the night, and all was still. 

***#### 

William Tilghman was driving back from Whitehaven 
in the melancholy thoughts inspired by the departure of 
his cousin, whom he had at last seen go into the great 
wilderness of the world the passive companion of her 
husband, like the wife of Cain, driven forth with him, 
when the carriage was arrested at the ancient Presbyte- 
rian church — which overlooked Princess Anne from the 
opposite bank of the little river — by a woman almost 
throwing herself under the wheels. 

“ Why, Lord sakes ! it’s our Virgie !” cried Rhoda Hob 
land. 

The girl, with all the energy of dread, sprang into the 
carriage by William Tilghman’s side and threw her arms 
around him : 

“ Save me ! Save me !” 

“ What ails you, Virgie ?” cried the young man, assur- 
ingly. “You are in no danger, child !” 

“ I am sold,” the girl gasped, with terror on her tongue 
and in her wild eyeballs. “MissVesty’s sold me to her 
Uncle Allan. He’s sent the kidnappers after me. They’re 
yonder, in Princess Anne. Oh, drive me to the North, 
to the swamps, anywhere but there !” 


400 THE ENTAILED HAT. 

“ I know your mistress made you over to her mother, 
Virgie, for a precaution, fearing you might not be safe in 
her own hands. She told me so, and asked if the death 
of her mother could possibly affect you.” 

“ Oh, it has !” the girl whispered. “ Mary knows the 
kidnapper that’s come for me. He is the same that stole 
Hominy and the children. He kept her chained on an 
island. He says he’ll have me to-night, to do as he 
pleases. Master McLane lets him have me !” 

The girl, in her terror, as the carriage had descended 
the hill already and crossed the Manokin, seized the 
reins in Tilghman’s hands and drew them with such 
frenzy that the horses, as they came to Meshach Mil- 
burn’s store, were pulled into the open area before it, 
where something in their surprise or lyipg on the ground 
gave them immediate fright, and they dashed at a gallop 
into Front Street, the wheels passing over an object by 
the old storehouse that nearly upset the carriage. 

The street they took for their run crossed a small arm 
of the Manokin, and led up to a gentleman’s gate ; but 
before this brook was crossed Tilghman, an experienced 
horseman and driver, had reined the flying animals into 
a nearly unoccupied street, called Back Alley, parallel 
with the main street of Princess Anne, but hidden from 
it by houses and gardens, and almost in a moment of 
time the whole town had been cleared, with hardly a per- 
son in it aware of such a vehicle going past. 

It was a real runaway, but Tilghman, in a cool, gentle 
voice, like a brook’s music, told the girls to sit perfectly 
still, as they had a clear, level road ; and, seeing that he 
could not stop the animals by any mere exercise of 
strength, without danger to his harness, he waited for 
their power to wear out, or their fears to subside. 

Rhoda Holland was ashamed to scream, if her pride 
was not too well aroused already in the presence of the 
muscular young minister, sitting there like an artillery 


GARTER-SNAKES. 


401 


teamster driving into battle, and his nostrils and jaws 
delineated in the gray air, expressed almost the joy he 
had long put by of following the hounds in the autumn 
fox-hunts, where Judge Custis said he had been the per- 
fect pattern of a rider. 

As for Virgie, she felt no fear of wild horses, since they 
were leaving behind the bloody hunters of men and 
women, and she almost wished it was herself alone, dash- 
ing at that frightful pace to destruction, until the young 
man, mindful, perhaps, of his mistress, torn from his sight 
to inhabit another’s arms, and feeling that this poor quad- 
roon was dear as a sister to Vesta’s heart, bent down in 
the midst of his apprehensions and kissed the slave girl 
pityingly. 

Then, with an instant’s greater torrent of tears, a sense 
of rest and man’s respect fell upon Virgie’s soul, and she 
paid no heed to time or dangers till the carriage came to 
a stop in the deep forest sands several miles east of Prin- 
cess Anne. 

“William,” said Rhoda Holland, “what air we to do 
to save Virgie? Uncle Meshach’s gone. Jedge Custis 
is nobody knows whar, now. This yer Allan McLane, 
Aunt Vesty says, is dreffle snifflin’ an’ severe. I think it’s 
a conspliracy to steal Virgie when they’s all away. Misc 
Somers would take keer of her, but I’m afraid she’d tell 
somebody.” 

“Are you sure that you saw and heard truly?” the 
minister said to Virgie. 

“ Oh, yes. I saw the same man at Mr. Milburn’s the 
day he was taken sick. He looked at me a low, familiar 
look, and muttered something evil. Mary knew him too 
well. Oh, do not take me back to Princess Anne. I 
will never go there again.” 

“ It may be true,” Tilghman reflected. “ It probably 
is true. Vesta has no faith in Allan McLane. She says 
he makes money in the negro trade, with all his religious 
2 6 


402 


THE ENTAILED HAT.. 


formality. He is the trustee already of Mrs. Custis’s es- 
tate ; no doubt, the administrator by will. He may have 
sent Joe Johnson to kidnap Virgie, under color of his 
right, and Johnson would abuse anybody. Vesta will 
never forgive us if we let Virgie go to him.” 

“ But I am a slave,” Virgie sobbed. “ Oh, my Lord ! 
to think I am not Miss Vesta’s, but a strange man’s, 
slave. How could she give me away !” 

“ It was an error of judgment,” Tilghman replied. 
“ She could not anticipate her mother’s immediate death. 
Yet there, where she thought you safest, you were most 
in peril.” 

They had now crossed the Dividing creek into Worces- 
ter County, and halted to cool the horses off at the same 
old spring, under the gum-tree, where Meshach Milburn 
stopped, the evening he went to the Furnace village. 

“William,” Rhoda Holland spoke, “if Virgie is 
McLane’s slave you can’t keep him from a-takin’ her. 
She can’t go back to Prencess Anne at all.” 

“ I don’t mean that she shall, Rhoda. I know you are 
a brave woman, and we will drive her to-night to Snow 
Hill, and leave her there with a nurse, a free woman, 
once belonging to my family, and this nurse has a hus- 
band who is said to be a conductor on what is called the 
Underground Road to the free states.” 

“Lord sakes ! a Abolitionist?” 

“ I hope so,” Tilghman said. “ I know Vesta wants 
to set this girl free, and there is no way to do it, and re- 
spect her womanhood, but by giving her a wild beast’s 
chance to run.” 

“ My, my ! And you a minister of the Gospil, Will- 
iam !” 

“ Yes, of the Gospel that tells me how to be a neighbor 
to my neighbor.” The young man’s eyes flashed. “I 
never felt so humiliated for my cloth and for my country 
as now. To think how many men preach the Gospel of 


GARTER-SNAKES. 


403 


God all their lives long, and have never set a living soul 
free. I will do one such Christian felony, by the help of 
Christ.” 

As he spoke, the sound of a corn-stalk fiddle, and of 
foresters’ naked feet dancing on the floor of the old Mil- 
burn cabin, came crooning out in the night. 

In another hour they were at the Furnace village, its 
blast gone out, its lines of huts deserted, no human soul 
to be seen ; and the mill-pond, lying like a parchment un- 
der the funereal cypress-trees, seemed stained with the 
blood of the bog-ores that oozed upward from the depths 
like the corpse of murdered Enterprise, suffocated in Me- 
shach Milburn’s foreclosure. 

A sense of desolation filled them all ; but what was it, 
in either of the white twain, to the bursting ties of that 
lovely quadroon, raised like a lily in the household heat 
of kindness and the breath of purity, to be cast forth like 
a witch, on a moment’s information, and consigned to the 
ponds and night-damps ? 

The horses toiled through the sand till an open coun- 
try of farms gave better roads, and at ten o’clock at night 
they crossed the Pocomoke at Snow Hill, and stopped at 
a gate before a neat, whitewashed, one-story house, with 
a large stack-chimney over the centre, and two doors and 
a single window in the front. It stood in a short street 
leading to the river, whose splutter-docks and reeds were 
seen near by among the masts of vessels and the mounds 
of sawdust. 

Virgie kissed Rhoda good-night, and descended with 
Mr. Tilghman, who opened a gate, and, going up some 
steps, knocked at a vine -environed door. A window 
opened and there was a parley, and the door soon after- 
wards unclosed softly and admitted them. 

“ Oh, may God let you know some night the pure bed 
and sleep you have brought me to !” Virgie whispered. 
“ God bless you for the kiss you gave me, my dear white 


404 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


playmate, that you are not ashamed of ! Oh, my heart is 
bursting : what can I say?” 

“ The people here will hide you, or slip you forward 
to-morrow night,” the young minister said. “ Here is 
money, Virgie, to pay your way. You can write, and 
write to your young mistress wherever you go.” 

“ Tell her,” said the runaway girl, “ that I loved her 
dearly. Oh, dear old Teackle Hall ! shall I ever see you 
again ? William, I shall get my freedom, or die on the 
road to it.” 

“ That is the spirit,” the minister said ; “ we will buy 
it for you if we can, but get it for yourself if you can do it.” 

He kissed her again, with the instinct of a father to a 
child, and hastened to his horses and theihotel. 

As Tilghman and Rhoda, at the earliest dawn, started 
for Princess Anne, the young girl suddenly turned and 
kissed her minister. 

“ Thar !” she said, “ I think you just looked magnifi- 
cens last night, sittin’ behine them critters, like Death on 
the plale horse, an’ lovin’ Aunt Vesty, though she’s gone 
away an’ quit you, enough to fight for her pore, bright- 
skinned gal. I wish somebody would love me like that !” 

“ So you could quit him, too, Rhoda?” 

“ Well, William, I likes beaus that’s couragelis ! You’re 
splendid a-preachin’, but I like you better drivin’ and 
showin’ your excitemins.” 

“You are a beautiful girl,” the clergyman said ; “sup- 
pose you try to like me better.” 

The great question, being thus opened, was not dis- 
posed of when. they reached Princess Anne, and quietly 
stabled the horses. 


HONEYMOON. 


405 


Chapter XXXIII. 

HONEYMOON. 

Meanwhile the steamer was taking Vesta and her 
husband across the Chesapeake Bay in the night — that 
greatest, gentlest indentation in the coast of the United 
States ; at once river and sound, fiord and sea, smooth 
as the mill-pond, and full of life as the nutritious milk of 
the mother, and on whose breast a brood of rivers lay 
and suckled without rivalry — the long Susquehanna, 
James, and Potomac j the short, thick Choptank, Ches- 
ter, and Patapsco ; and, to the flying wild-swan, its arbor- 
age looked like a vast pine-tree, with boughs of snow, 
climbing two hundred miles from its roots in the land of 
corn and cotton into the golden cloud of Northern grain 
and hay. 

Upon one broken horn of this fruitful bay hung Balti- 
more, like an eagle’s nest upon the pine, seizing the point 
of indentation that brought it nearest to the fertile upland 
and the valley outlets of the North and West, where the 
toil-loving Germans burnished their farms with women’s 
hands, and sent their long-bowed teams to market on as 
many turnpikes as the Chesapeake had rivers. 

At morning Vesta looked upon the fleet of little sail 
lying in the basin of the city, among larger ships and arks 
and barges, and saw Federal Hill’s red clay rising a hun- 
dred feet above the piers, and the spotless monument to 
Washington resting its base as high above the tide, on a 
nearly naked bluff. The rich sunrise fell on the streaked 
flag of the republic at the mast on Fort McHenry, and 
the garrison band was playing the very anthem that law- 
yer Key had written in the elation of victory, though a 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


406 

prisoner in the enemy’s hands. Alas ! how many a pris- 
oner in the enemy’s hands was doing tribute to that flag 
from cotton-field and rice-swamp, tobacco land and corn- 
row, pouring the poetry of his loyalty and toil to the very 
emblem of his degradation ! 

Vesta heard, with both satisfaction and sorrow, at Bar- 
num’s Hotel that her husband was too ill to attend the 
funeral, and must keep his room and fire ; she needed 
his comfort and devotion in her sorrow, but upon her 
dead mother’s bier seemed to stand the injunction against 
that fateful hat he had brought with him ; and yet she 
pitied him that he must stay alone, unknown, unre- 
lated, chattering with the chill or burning without com- 
plaint. 

“ God send you sympathy from the angete like you, my 
darling !” Milburn said. “ I know what it is to lose a 
mother.” 

Escorts in plenty waited on Vesta, but she wished she 
could find some kinsman of her husband, if ever so poor, 
to take his arm to the church and burial-ground ; and at 
the news that her uncle Allan McLane had not arrived, 
and would not, probably, now be present, she felt another 
blending of relief and apprehension, because her husband 
might not to-day be exasperated by him, yet his relations 
to her mother’s property would still remain unknown, — 
and Vesta feared for Virgie. 

In the same impulse which had made her retain Teackle 
Hall, to secure it against her father’s careless business 
methods, she had made Virgie over to her mother, to 
place her, apparently, farther from danger, never suppos- 
ing that in those prudent hands the enemy might insinu- 
ate ; but Death, the deathless enemy, was filching every- 
where, and though she could not see why Virgie could be 
persecuted, Vesta now wished she had set her free. 

The girl belonged to her mother’s estate : suppose 
Allan McLane was the administrator of it ? Suppose, in- 


HONEYMOON. 407 

deed, he was the heir ? Vesta’s heart fell, as she consid- 
ered that a woman had best let business alone. 

The young bride-mourner was an object of mingled ad- 
miration and sympathy as she leaned on the arm of a 
kinsman and entered the Presbyterian kirk. She was 
considered one of the great beauties of Maryland, and 
the young Robert Breckenridge, fresh from Kentucky, on 
a visit to his brother, the pastor, thought he had never 
seen Vesta’s equal even in Kentucky ; and, as he gazed 
through her mourning veil, the pastor’s Delaware wife 
heard him whisper, “ Divinity itself !” 

The clear olive skin, eyes of gray twilight, eyebrows 
like midnight’s own arches, and luxuriant hair, were 
touched by grief as if a goddess suffered ; and, in her 
deep mourning robes, Vesta seemed a monarch’s daugh- 
ter about to pass through some convent to her saint- 
hood. 

She had the height to give dignity to this beauty, and 
the grace to lift pathos above weakness. 

The minister’s musical tones were wrought to conso- 
nance with this noble human model, and he spoke of 
that ideal motherhood which, to every child at the bier, 
seems real as the dripping bucket at the fairy’s well — of 
mother’s love, trials, weakness, and immortality ; of the 
absence of her sympathy making the first great bereave- 
ment in life’s progress ; of her nature abiding in us and 
her spirit hovering over, while we live. 

Painted in the soft hues of personal experience, pre- 
scribed to her needs with a physician’s art, doing all that 
funeral talk can do to raise the final tears from among 
the heartstrings and pour them in oblation upon the 
corpse, the pastor’s consolation had the effect of some 
mesmeric hand that weakens our systems while it subli- 
mates our feelings, and Vesta’s female nature was almost 
broken down. 

Where could she lean for the close sympathy befitting 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


408 

such grief? Her father was not here, and she had none 
but her husband — the husband of less than a week, but 
still the nearest to her need. 

On him she allowed herself to rest that solemn even- 
ing after her mother’s body had sought the ground. He 
was well again, for the time. 

For the first time she was alone with him, and, as the 
shadows narrowed their chamber, and they sat with no 
other light than a little wood smouldering in the grate, 
he came to her and began to talk of childhood and his 
own mother, of the little sorrows his mother had shared 
with him, of domestic disagreements and happy love- 
making anew ; how men feel when the partner of life is 
taken away, and children know not the meaning of Death, 
that has done so awful a thing upon the inoffensive one ; 
but above all is shining, Meshach said, the star of moth- 
erhood, faintly lighting our way, mellowing our souls, and 
basking on the waters. 

As he continued, and she could not see him, but only 
hear the plaintiveness of his voice, it became comfortable 
to hear him speak, and she grew more passive, a sense of 
resignation fell upon her heart, and of gratitude to him 
that could divine her loss so touchingly; and, like a child, 
she rested upon his side, upon his knee, and in his arms 
at last. Not fond nor yet infatuated, but subsiding and 
consenting, accepting her destiny like a myriad of women 
that are neither oppressed nor tender, but with reluctance, 
yield, she passed out of grief to wifedom, like one tired 
and in a dream. 

Visits of consolation were made by a few old friends 
for a day or two succeeding. The Rev. Henry Lyon 
Davis, late president of the college at Annapolis, came, 
bringing his handsome boy of twelve, Master Harry Win- 
ter Davis. The attorney-general of Maryland, Mr. Roger 
Taney, came with Mr. George Brown, the banker. Com- 
modore Decatur’s widow sent a mourning token, and the 


HONEYMOON. 409 

Honorable William Wirt brought Mr. Robert Smith, once 
the secretary of state at Washington. 

These and others, looking at Meshach Milburn a little 
oddly, found him, on acquaintance, a man of sense ; but 
the McLanes who called were either supercilious or stu- 
diously avoided the groom. 

An invitation came from Arlington House to Vesta, to 
bring Mr. Milburn there ; and, as they proceeded out the 
Washington road in a private carriage, they observed Mr. 
Ross Winans’s friction-wheel car, with nearly forty people 
in it, making its trial trip behind a horse at a gallop. At 
the Relay House, where the horses on the railroad were 
changed, Milburn remarked, gazing up the Patapsco val- 
ley : 

“ My wife, we are here at the birth of this little iron 
highway. If our vision was great enough, we might see 
the mighty things that may happen upon it : servile in- 
surrection, sectional war, great armies riding to great bat- 
tles, thousands of emigrants drawn to the West. We 
shall die, but generations after us this road will grow and 
continue, like a vein of iron, whose length and uses no 
man can measure.” 

The road to Washington was in places good, and often 
turned in among the pines. At Riverdale they saw the 
deer of Mr. George Calvert, a descendant of one of the 
Lords Baltimore, browsing in his park, and his great four- 
in-hand carriage was going in the lodge-gates from a state 
visit to the Custises. Passing direct to Georgetown from 
Bladensburg, they encountered General Jackson, taking 
his evening ride on horseback, and saw the chasm of the 
new canal being dug along the Potomac, and then, cross- 
ing Mason’s ferry, they were set down at Arlington House 
an hour after dark. 

The hospitable, harmless proprietor welcomed them 
into the huge edifice, half temple, half barn, among his elab- 
orate daubs of pictures, and furniture and relics of Cus- 


4io 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


tis and Washingtonian times. He was nearly fifty years 
of age, of Indian features, but rather weak face, like one 
whose only substantiality was in his ancestors, and Vesta, 
placing him beside her husband, reflected that a similar 
inbreeding had produced a similarity in the two men, both 
of a sallow and bilious attenuation ; but Milburn, beside 
her kinsman Custis, was like a bold wolf beside a vacant- 
visaged sheep. 

Yet these men liked each other immediately, Milburn’s 
intelligence and money, and real reverence for the great 
man who had adopted Mr. Custis, giving him admittance 
to the latter’s fancy. 

They strolled through those beautiful woods, one day 
to become a grove of sepulture for an army of dead, 
while Vesta, in the dwelling, talked with her cousins, and 
with the graceful Lieutenant Lee, who was courting Mary 
Custis. 

It was a happy domestic life, and in the host’s veins 
ran the blood of the Calverts, though not of the legiti- 
mate line. 

It was suggested to go to the Capitol, and Mr. Milburn, 
growing daily better in the hill region, went also, and 
wore his steeple hat, greatly to the edification of Mr. 
Custis, who revelled in such antiquities. Vesta heard 
the ladies whispering, when they returned, that a parcel 
of boys and negroes had followed the hat, laughing and 
jeering, and had finally driven the party to their carriage. 
This, and her husband’s impatience to return to his busi- 
ness, hastened their departure from Arlington. 

They took the steamer down the Potomac, and, as they 
came off the mouth of St. Mary’s River, Milburn donned 
his Raleigh’s hat again, and stood on deck, looking at 
the lights about the old Priest’s House, where the capital 
of Lord Baltimore lay, a naked plain and a few starveling 
mementoes, within the bight of a sandy point that faced 
the archipelago of the Eastern Shore. 


THE ORDEAL. 


411 

“ My hat,” said Milburn to himself, “is old as yonder 
town, and better preserved. The Calverts and Milburns 
have married into Mrs. Washington’s kin. Does my 
wife love me?” 


Chapter XXXIV. 

THE ORDEAL. 

When Levin Dennis awoke in the bottom of the old 
wagon it was being rapidly driven, and Van Dorn’s voice 
from the driver’s seat was heard to say, without its usual 
lisp and Spanish interjection : 

“ Whitecar, is your brother at Dover sure of his game ?” 

“ Cock sure, Cap’n. Got ’em tree’d ! Best domestic 
stock in the town thar, an’ the purtiest yaller gals : I know 
that suits you, Cap’n !”. 

“ Have they arms ?” 

“Not a trigger. We trap ’em at one of their ‘festi- 
bals.’ No, sir, niggers won’t scrimmage.” 

“We assemble at Devil Jim Clark’s,” said Van Dorn, 
and passed by with a crack of his whip. 

Levin, whom some friendly hand had wrapped in a 
bearskin coat — he had seen one like it upon.Van Dorn — 
next heard the slaver speak to another party he had 
overtaken : 

“ Melson ?” 

“Ay yi!” 

“ Milman ?” 

“ Ah ! boy.” 

“ You get your orders at Devil Jim Clark’s !” 

The stars were out, yet the night was rich in large, 
fleecy clouds, as if heaven were hurrying onward too. 
Levin lay on his back, jostled by the rough wagon, but, 
being perfectly sober now, he was more reasoning and 


412 THE ENTAILED HAT. 

courageous, and his new-found love impelled him to self- 
preservation. He might have rolled out of the vehicle 
and into the woods, and at least saved himself from com- 
mitting further crime, but how would he see Hulda any 
more — Hulda, in danger, perhaps ? Thus, even to igno- 
rance, love brings understanding, and Levin began to ask 
himself the cause of his own misery. He knew it was 
liquor, yet what made him drink if not a disposition too 
easily led? Even now he was under almost voluntary 
subjection to the bandit in the wagon, whose voice he 
heard blandly command again to some pair he had caught 
up to : 

“ Tindel ?” 

“Tackle ’em, Cap’n Van ! Tackle ’em !” 

“ You are not to be in peril to-night, so keep your spir- 
its. I expect you to look out for the cords, gags, and 
fastenings generally !” 

“ Tackle ’em, Captin ; oh, tackle ’em !” 

“You and Buck Ransom there — ” 

“ Politely, Captain ; politely, sir !” exclaimed an insin- 
uating voice from a negro rider. 

“Are to meet us all at Devil Jim’s!” 

“ Tackle ’em, Captin !” 

“ Politely, Captain !” 

As Van Dorn urged his way to the head of the line, 
Levin looked out silently upon the flat country of forest 
and a few poor farms, drained imperfectly by some ditches 
of the Choptank. He supposed it might be almost mid- 
night, from the position of those brilliant constellations 
which shone down equally upon his mother and himself — 
she in her innocence and he in his anxiety — and shone, 
also, perhaps, upon his poor father’s grave in isle or 
ocean. 

Within an hour blood was to be shed, no doubt, and 
rapine done, and he knew not the road to escape by nor 
the hole to hide in. Yet in that hoqr he had to make his 


THE ORDEAL. 


413 


choice, — to fight for liberty, or go to the jail, the whipping- 
post, or, perhaps, the gallows. 

Levin considered ruefully his vagrant past, and how 
little ^could be said in extenuation of him in a court of 
justice, except by his mother’s faith, which was no more 
evidence than a negro’s oath. 

Once it arose in his mind to surprise Van Dorn, over- 
come him, cast him out in a ditch, and drive to some one 
of the little farmhouses and rest, till day should give him 
his whereabouts and remedy. 

Levin was not a coward, and his muscles were hard, 
and his feet could cling to a smooth plank like a bird’s 
to a bough ; but his heart relented to the fierce, soft man 
so unsuspectingly sitting with his back to him, when Levin 
reflected that he must, perhaps, put an end to Van Dorn’s 
life with his sailor’s knife, if they grappled at all, and this 
day expiring Van Dorn had paid a debt for him to the 
widow whose son was next overtaken, and who cried, for- 
wardly, without being addressed : 

“Van Dorn, what you goin’ to give me if I git a nig- 
ger?” 

“ This !” said Van Dorn, without a pause, reaching the 
boy a measured blow with his whip-lash on the shoulder 
that made him literally fall from the mule and grovel with 
pain. 

“ Discipline is what your mother failed to give you, 
reprobo. Manners I shall teach you. Fall in the rear !” 

Owen Daw crawled desperately on his mule and obeyed 
without parley, but his audacity soon recovered enough to 
force his animal up to the vijagon tail and open whispered 
communications with Levin there. 

Nothing had passed them for hours that Levin had 
seen, when suddenly a horseman at a rapid lope stopped 
the wagon, and a hoarse negro voice muttered : 

“ How de do, now? See me ! see me !” 

“Derrick Molleston ?” spoke Van Dorn. 


414 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ See me ! see me !” 

“ Get down and ride with me. Levin, are you awake ?” 

“Yes, Captain.” 

“Take this man’s horse and ride him. John Sorden is 
ahead. It will stretch your chilled limbs.” 

“ May I go with him ?” asked Owen Daw, in his Celtic 
accent, quite cringing now. 

“ Not unless he wants you.” 

“ Come, then,” Levin obligingly said. 

While the two youths were still lingering by the wagon 
they heard these words : 

“ Have you arranged everything with Whitecar and 
Devil Jim?” 

“ See me ! see me !” — apparently meaning, “ Rely upon 
me.” 

“ Is Greenley ready to make the diversion if any attack 
be made upon us ?” 

“ See me ! see me ! His gallus is up and he’d burn de 
world.” 

* “ This Lawyer Clayton ?” 

“ See me ! see me ! He gives a big party, Aunt Braner 
tole me. A judge is dar from Prencess Anne, an’ liquor 
a-plenty. See me ! see me !” 

“ The white people absolutely gone from Cowgill 
House ?” 

“ See me ! It’s nigh half a mile outen de town. Dar’s 
forty tousand dollars, if dar’s a cent, at dat festibal : gals 
more’n half white, men dat can read an’ preach : de cream 
of Kent County. See me ! see me !” 

“And not a suspicion of our coming?” 

“ See me ! O see me !” hoarsely said the negro ; “ in- 
nercent as de unborn. To-night’s deir las’ night !” 

Levin trembled as these merciless words reached his 
ears, but Owen Daw seemed to forget his affront at the 
tidings, and chuckled to Levin as they trotted away : 

“Bet you I git a better nigger nor you!” 


i 


THE ORDEAL. 


415 


“ Oh, shame, Owen Daw ! Your mother was saved to- 
day from bein’ turned out of doors by my pity. Think 
of robbin’ these niggers of their freedom ! What have 
they done ?” 

“ Been niggers !” exclaimed Owen Daw. “ That’s 
enough !” 

“ What will you do, Owen, to help your poor mother ?” 

“ Wait till I git big enough, bedad, an’ kill ole Jake Can- 
non for this day’s work.” 

As they rode on they came to the man called Sorden, 
riding as the guide to the invading column, a person of 
more genteel address than any beneath Van Dorn, and 
young, pliable, and frolicking. 

“My skin !” he said. “ Now, boys, Van Dorn oughtn’t 
had to brung you. You’re too sniptious for this rough 
work. I love the Captain better than I ever loved A 
male, but he oughtn’t to spile boys.” 

“Van Dorn told me to come,” Owen Daw cried. “ I’m 
big enough to buck a nigger.” 

“ I love him better than I ever loved A male,” said 
Sorden, apologetically. “Who is t’other young offend- 
er ?” 

“ I’m a stranger to your parts,” Levin replied. “ Mrs. 
Cannon made me come. I didn’t want to.” 

“Are you afear’d?” 

“ Yes,” Levin said. 

“ Well, I love the Captain better than I ever loved A 
male. But boys is boys, and I hate to see ’em spiled. 
If you was nigger boys I wouldn’t keer a cent; but 
white’s my color, and I don’t want to trade in it.” 

They halted at a small, sharp-gabled brick house, of 
one story and a kitchen and garret, at the left of the 
road, to which the corner of a piece of oak and hickory 
woods came up shelteringly, while in the rear several 
small barns and cribs enclosed the triangle of a field. A 
door in the middle, towards Maryland, seemed very high- 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


416 

silled, and low grated windows were at the cellar on each 
side of the steps. 

The place had a suspicious appearance, and a pack of 
hounds in full cry rushed from the kitchen, and, while in 
the act of leaping the stile and palings, were arrested al- 
most in mid air by a chuffy voice crying from within : 

“ Hya ! Down ! Spitch !” 

The whole pack meekly sneaked back to the house, 
whining low, and a few blows of a switch and short howls 
within completed the excitement. 

“ What place is this ?” asked Owen Daw. 

“ Devil Jim Clark’s,’’ said Sorden. 

The dwelling stood about forty yards back from the 
road, drawing nearly into the cover of the woods, and its 
little yard was made cavernous by thick-planted paper- 
mulberry and maple trees, while a line of cherry-trees and 
an old pole-well rose along the road and hedge. As they 
rode to the rear of the house a little dormer window, like 
a snail, crawled low along the roof, and a light was shining 
from it. 

“Devil Jim’s business-office,” nodded Sorden. 

“ What’s his business ?” asked Levin, freshly. 

“ Niggers. He keeps ’em up thar between the garret 
and the roof — sometimes in the cellar.” 

“ Does he want a business-office for that ?” 

“ He’s a contractor on the canawl, too, Jim is — raises 
race-horses, farms it, gambles a little, but nigger-runnin’ is 
his best game. My skin ! Yer comes Captain Van Dorn. 
I love him as I never loved A male.” 

“Van Dorn,” spoke a voice from the house, “remem- 
ber my family is particular. Your men must go to the 
barn. Come in !” 

“ Spiced brandy at the barn !” — a quiet remark from 
somewhere — was sufficient to lead the herd away, and, 
giving the order to “ water and fodder,” Van Dorn passed 
into the kitchen, thence through a bedroom to the chief 


THE ORDEAL. 


417 


room of the house, and up a small winding-stair to a scrap 
of hallway or corridor hardly two feet wide. 

The man who led pointed to a trap above one end of 
this hall, and exclaimed, “ Niggers there ! family yonder !” 
— the last reference to a door closing the little passage. 

He then opened a wicket at the side of the hall, admit- 
ting Van Dorn to an exceedingly small closet or garret 
room, barely large enough for the men to sit, and lighted 
by a lamp in the little dormer window seen from below. 

“ Drink !” said the man, uncorking a bottle of cham- 
pagne ; “ I had it ready for you.” 

He poured the foaming wine and set the bottle on a 
sort of secretary or desk, and then looked anxiety and 
avarice together out of his liquid black eyes and broad, 
heavy face. 

“ Buena suerte , sehor /” Van Dorn lisped, as they drank 
together. 

“Hya! spitch !” nervously muttered Clark, cutting his 
own top-boots with a dog-whip. “ I wish I was out of 
the business : the risk is too great. My wife is religious 
— praying, mebbe, now, in there. My daughters is at the 
seminaries, spendin’ money like the Canawl Company on 
the lawyers. Nothin’ pays like nigger-stealin’, but it’s 
beneath you and me, Van Dorn.” 

“ A la verdad ! This is my last incursion, Don Clark. 
Pleasure has kept me poor for life. To-day I did a little 
sacrifice, and it grows upon me.” 

“ If they should ketch me and set me in the pillory, 
Van Dorn, for what you do to-night, hya ! spitch !” — he 
slashed his knees — “it would break Mrs. Clark’s heart.” 

“I want this money to-night,” said Van Dorn, “to 
make two young people happy. They shall take my 
portion, and take me with them out of the plains of 
Puckem.” 

“ Oh, it is nervous business ” — Clark’s eyes of rich 
jelly made the pallor on his large face like a winding- 
27 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


418 

sheet — “ hya ! spitch ! The Quakers are a-watchin’ me. 
Ole Zekiel Jinkins over yer, ole Warner Mifflin down to 
the mill, these durnecl Hunns at the Wildcat — they look 
me through every time they ketch me on the road. But 
the canawl contract don’t pay like niggers; my folks 
must hold their heads up in the world ; Sam Ogg won’t 
let me keep out of temptation.” 

“Do you fear me, Devil Jim?” 

“ Hya ! spitch ! No. If all in the trade was like you, 
I could sleep in trust. If you go out of it, so will I.” 

“ Then to-night, pe?iitbnte ! we make our few thousand 
and quit. Give up your cards and I my doncellitas , and 
we can at least live.” 

They shook hands and drank another glass, and then 
Van Dorn said : 

“Send up to me, hermano ! the lad who will reply to 
the name of Levin. With him I would speak while you 
give the directions ! Poor coward !” Van Dorn said, after 
his host had descended the stairs, “he can never be less 
than a thief with that irksomeness under such fair com- 
petence.” 

At that moment a beautiful maid or woman, in her 
white night-robe, stood in the little doorway, with eyes so 
like the richness of his just gone that it must have been 
his daughter. She fled as she recognized a stranger, 
and Van Dorn pursued till a door was closed in his face. 

“ Poor fool !” he said, sinking into his chair again ; “ I 
will never be more honest than any woman can make 
me !” 

As Levin entered the little hallway Van Dorn smiled : 

“ Here is a glass of real wine to inspire you,ju?ico” 

“No, Captain. I would rather die than drink it.” 

“Do you repent coming with me?” 

“Oh, bitterly, Captain. I don’t want to steal poor, 
helpless people if they is black.” 

“ Now, listen, lad !”— Van Dorn’s face ceased to blush 


THE ORDEAL. 


419 

and the coarse look came into his blue eyes — “this 
night’s excursion is for your profit. I like your gentle 
inclination for me, and the good acts you have solicited 
from me, and the confidence you have shown me as to 
your love for pretty Hulda. Join me in this work wilL 
ingly, and I will give her, for your marriage settlement, 
all my share.” 

“ Never,” Levin exclaimed. 

Van Dorn drew his knife and rose to his feet. 

“Levin,” he lisped, “I promised Patty Cannon that I 
would bring you back spotted with crime or dead. Now 
choose which it shall be.” 

“To die, then,” cried Levin, with one hand drawing 
the long, silken hair from his eyes and with the other 
drawing his own knife ; “but I will fight for my life.” . 

Van Dorn seized Levin’s wrist in a vise-like grip, but, 
as he did so, threw his own knife upon the floor. 

“ Oh ! huerfano , waif,” Van Dorn murmured, while his 
blush returned, “ take heed thou ever sayest ‘ No ’ with 
courage like that, when cowardice or weak acquiescence 
would extort thy ‘Yes.’ This moment, if thou hadst con- 
sented, thy heart would be on my knife, young Levin !” 

He drew the knife from Levin’s hand and put it in his 
ragged coat again, and set the boy on his knee as if he 
had been a little child. 

“ Oh, God be thanked I did not kill you, sir,” sobbed 
Levin, his tears quickly following his courage ; “ twice I 
have thought of doin’ it to-day.” 

“ I never would have put you to that test, my poor lad, 
but that I saw your conscience at work all this day under 
the stimulation of virtuous love. Think nothing of me. 
Build your own character upon some good example, and, 
sweet as life is, fight for it on the very frontiers of your 
character. Die young, but surrender only when you are 
old.” 

“ Captain,” Levin said, “ how kin I git character ? My 


420 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


father is dead. Everybody twists me around his fin- 
gers.” 

“Then think of some plain, strong, faithful man you 
may know and refer every act of your character to him. 
Ask yourself what he would do in your predicament, then 
go and do the same.” 

“ I do know such a man,” Levin said, in another mo- 
ment ; “ it is Jimmy Phoebus, my poor, beautiful mother’s 
beau.” 

“El rayo ha caido /” Van Dorn spoke, low and calm; 
“yes, Levin, any man worthy of your mother will do.” 

“ Captain, turn back with me ! Is it too late ?” 

“ Too late these many years, young sehor. I shall lead 
the war on Africa to-night again at Cowgill House.” 

He rose and finished the wine. 

“ Clark shall give you a horse, Levin. I present it to 
you. Ride on with Sorden at the lead, and a mile from 
here, at Camden town, take your own way. Good-night !” 

Taking a single look at the miserable band of whites 
and blacks collected in the barn, and revealed by a lan- 
tern’s light in the excitement of drink and avarice, or the 
familiarity of fear and vice — some inspecting gags of corn- 
cob and bucks of hickory, others trimming clubs of black- 
jack with the roots attached ; others loading their horse- 
pistols and greasing the dagger-slides thereon ; some 
whetting their hog-killing knives upon harness, others 
cutting rope and cord into the lengths to bind men’s feet 
— Levin was set on the loping horse he had been already 
riding, by Clark, the host, and soon met Sorden on the 
road. 

“Where is Van Dorn ?” Sorden asked; “ I love him as 
I never loved A male:” 

“He sends me to Camden of an errand,” Levin an- 
swered ; “ is it far ?” 

“ About a mile. Three miles, then, to Dover. My 
skin ! how fresh your critter is ; ain’t it Dirck Molleston’s ? 


THE ORDEAL. 


421 


I thought so. Then he’ll be wantin’ to turn in at Coop- 
er’s Corners.” 

“ Does Derrick live there ?” 

“ Yes. That’s whar he holds the Forks of both roads 
from below, and watches the law in Dover. I hope Van 
Dorn will git away with the loot and not git ketched, fur 
I love him as I never loved A male.” 

Levin’s horse, at his easy gait, soon left Sorden far be- 
hind, and the strange events of the night, and his wonder 
what to do next, kept Levin’s brain whirling till he saw 
the form of a few houses rise among the trees, and a line 
of arborage indicate a main road from north to south. 
The scent as of cold, wide waters and marshes filled the 
night. 

“ Here is Camden,” Levin thought; “where shall I go? 
If I turn south I shall get no bed nor food all night, and 
be picked up in the mornin’ fur a kidnapper. I can’t go 
back. The big river or the ocean, I reckon, is before me. 
What would Jimmy Phoebus do?” 

He held the animal in as he asked this question, and 
paused at the crossing of the great State road. 

The idea slowly spread upon his whole existence that 
James Phoebus would, in Levin’s place, ride instantly to 
Dover and give the alarm. 

Levin tried to construct Phoebus in a mood to give 
some other advice, but, as the resolute pungy captain’s 
form seemed to bestride the young man’s mind, it rose 
more and more stalwart, and appeared to lead towards 
Dover, where so many poor souls, in the joys of inter- 
course and freedom, were like little birds unconscious of 
the hawks above them, and no man in the world but Levin 
Dennis could save them from death or bondage. 

Would James Phoebus, with his lion nature, ever hesi- 
tate in the duty of a citizen and a Christian under such 
circumstances, or forgive another man for withholding in- 
formation that might be life and liberty and mercy? 


422 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


Yet there was Van Dorn to be betrayed. What would 
Van Dorn do in Levin’s place? 

The words of Van Dorn, not a quarter of an hour old, 
spoke aloud in Levin’s echoing consciousness: “Think 
nothing of me. Refer every act to some faithful man 
and go and do the same !” 

Levin looked up, and the very clouds, now swollen dark 
in spite of starshine, seemed hurrying on Dover. The 
night-birds were crying “ Mercy ! mercy !” the lizards and 
tree-frogs seemed to cross each other’s voices, piping 
“Time! time ! time !” 

“Huldy /” Levin whispered, and let the reins fall loose, 
and his animal darted through Camden town to the 
north. 

He had gone by the small frame houses, the Quaker 
meeting, the stores, the outskirt residences, when sudden- 
ly his horse turned out to pass a large, dark object in the 
road ahead, and a horseman rode right across Levin’s 
course, forcing his animal back on its haunches. 

“ High doings, friend !” a man’s voice raspingly spoke ; 
“ I’m concerned for thee !” 

“Git out of my way or I’ll stab you !” Levin cried, be- 
tween his new ardor to do his duty and the idea that he 
had already been intercepted by Patty Cannon’s band. 

“ Ha, friend ! I’m less concerned for myself than thee. 
Thou wilt not stab a citizen of Camden town at his own 
door?” 

“For Heaven’s sake, let me go, then !” Levin pleaded. 
“ The kidnappers is coming to Dover in a few minutes. 
I want to tell Lawyer Clayton!” 

Immediately the other person, a tall, lean man, wheeled 
and dashed after the dark object ahead, which Levin, fol- 
lowing also hard, found to be a large covered wagon — 
something between the dearborn or farmer’s and the fam- 
ily carriage. # 

“Bill,” the Quaker called to the driver, “spare not 


THE ORDEAL. 


423 


thy whip till Dover be well past. Here is one who says 
kidnappers are raiding even the capital of Delaware. 
I’m concerned for thee !” 

The driver began to whip his horses into a gallop, and 
cries, as of several persons, came out of the close-cur- 
tained vehicle. 

“What’s in there?” Levin asked the Quaker, who had 
rejoined him ; “ niggers?” 

“ No, friend,” the Quaker crisply answered, “ only 
Christians.” 

They crossed a mill-stream, and soon afterwards a 
smaller run, without speaking, and came to a little log- 
and-frame cabin in a fork of the road, where Levin’s horse 
tried to run in. 

“ Ha, friend ! Is it not Derrick Molleston’s loper thee 
has — the same that he gets from Devil Jim Clark ? What 
art thou, then ? I feel concerned for thee.” 

“ A Christian, too, I hope,” answered Levin, forcing his 
nag up the road. 

“ Then thee is better than a youth in this dwelling we 
next pass,” the Quaker said, pointing to a brick house on 
the left ; “for there lived a judge whose son bucked a 
poor negro fiddler in his father’s cellar, and delivered him 
to Derrick Molleston to be sold in slavery. I hear the 
poor man tells it in his distant house of bondage.” 

“ What’s this ?” Levin inquired, seeing a strange struct- 
ure of beams on a cape or swell to the right, in sight of 
the dark forms of a town on the next crest beyond. 

“ A gallows,” said the Quaker, “on which a horse-thief 
will be hanged to-morrow. To steal a horse is death ; to 
steal a fellow-man is nothing.” 

As he spoke, the mysterious carriage turned down a 
cross street of Dover and stole into the obscurity of the 
town. 

“Ha! ha!” exclaimed the Quaker; “if Joe Johnson 
had not stopped to feed at Devil Jim’s, he might have 


424 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


overtaken my brother’s wagon full of escaping slaves. I 
tell thee, friend, because I’m scarce concerned for thee 
now.” 


Chapter XXXV. 

COWGILL HOUSE. 

Long after midnight, Dover was in bed, except at one 
large house on the Capitol green, where light shone 
through the chinks and cracks of curtains and shutters, 
and some watch-dog, perhaps, ran along curiously to see 
why. 

The stars and clouds in the somewhat troubled sky 
looked down through the leafless trees upon the pretty 
town and St. Jones’s Creek circling past it, and hardly 
noticed a long band of creeping men and animals steal 
up from the Meeting House branch, past the tannery and 
the academy, and plunge into the back streets of the 
place, avoiding the public square. 

One file turned down to the creek and crossed it, to 
return farther above, cutting off all escape by the north- 
ern road, while a second file slipped silently through and 
around the compact little hamlet and waited for the oth- 
er to arrive, when both encompassed an old brick dwell- 
ing standing back from the roadside in a green and ven- 
erable yard, nearly half a mile from the settled parts of 
Dover. 

This house was brilliantly lighted, and the rose-bushes 
and shade trees were all defined as they stood above the 
swells of green verdure and the ornamental paths and 
flower-beds. 

One majestic tulip-tree extended its long branches 
nearly to the portal of the quaint dwelling, and a luxuri- 
ant growth of ivy, starting between the cellar windows, 
clambered to the corniced carpentry of the eaves, and 


COWGILL HOUSE. 


425 


made almost solid panels of vine of the spaces between 
the four large, keystoned windows in two stories, which 
stood to the right of the broad, dumpy door. 

This door, at the top of a flight of steps, was placed so 
near the gable angle of the house that it gave the impres- 
sion of but one wing of a mansion originally designed to 
be twice its length and size. 

Between this gable — which faced the road, and had four 
lines of windows in it, besides a basement row — and the 
back or town door, as described, was one squarish, roomy 
window, out of relation to all the rest, and perhaps twelve 
feet above the ground. This, as might be guessed, was 
on the landing of the stairs within ; for the great door 
and front of the residence being at the opposite side, the 
whole of the space at the townward gable, to the width 
of seventeen feet, was a noble hall about forty feet long, 
lofty, and with pilasters in architectural style, and lighted 
by two great windows in the gable and the square window 
on the stairway. 

The stairway itself was a beautiful piece of work and 
proportion, rising from the floor in ten railed steps to the 
landing at the square window, where a space several feet 
square commanded both the great front door and the 
windows in the gable, and also the yard behind ; thence, 
at right angles, the flight of steps rose along the back 
wall to a second landing over the dumpy back-door, and, 
by a third leap, returned at right angles, to the floor above, 
making what is called the well of the stairway to be ex- 
ceedingly spacious, and it opened to the garret floor. 

No doubt this cool, great hall was designed to be the 
centre of a large mansion, yet it had lost nothing in agree- 
ableness by becoming, instead, the largest room in the 
house, receiving abundant daylight, and it was large 
enough for either a feast or public worship, and such was 
its frequent use. 

Built by a tyrannical, eccentric man at the beginning 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


426 

of the century, it had passed through several families un- 
til a Quaker named Cowgill, who afterwards became a 
Methodist, and who held no slaves and was kind to black 
people, made it his property, and superintended a tannery 
and mill within sight of it. 

He was frequently absent for weeks, especially in the 
bilious autumn season, and allowed his domestics to as- 
semble their friends and the general race, at odd times, 
in the great hallway, for such rational enjoyments as they 
might select. 

In truth, the owner of the house desired it to get a more 
cheerful reputation ; for the negroes, in particular, con- 
sidered it haunted. 

The first owner, it was said, had amused himself in the 
great hall-room by making his own children stand on 
their toes, switching their feet with a whip when they 
dropped upon their soles from pain or fatigue ; and his 
own son finally shot at him through the great northern 
door with a rifle or pistol, leaving the mark to this day, to 
be seen by a small panel set in the original pine. The 
third owner, a lawyer, often entertained travelling clergy- 
men here ; and, on one occasion, the eccentric Reverend 
Lorenzo Dow met on the stairs a stranger and bowed to 
him, and afterwards frightened the host’s family by telling 
it, since they were not aware of any stranger in the house. 
The room over the great door had always been consid- 
ered the haunt of peculiar people, who molested nobody 
living, but appeared there in some quiet avocation, and 
vanished when pressed upon. 

This main door itself had a church-like character, and 
was battened or built in half, so that the upper part could 
be thrown open like a window, and yet the lock on this 
upper part was a foot and a half long, and the key weighed 
a pound. 

This ponderous door, in elaborate carpentry, opened 
upon a flight of steps and on a flower-yard surrounded by 


COWGILL HOUSE. 


427 


elms, firs, and Paulownia trees, the latter of a beany odor 
and nature. A lower servants’ part of the dwelling, in 
two stories, stretched to the fields, and had a veranda- 
covered rear. 

Van Dorn called to a negro : 

“ Buck Ransom !” 

“ Politely, Captain,” the negro’s insinuating voice an- 
swered. 

“Go to the front door and knock. As you enter, see 
that it is clear to fly open. Then, as you pass along the 
hall, throw the windows up.” 

“ Politely, Captain the negro bowed and departed. 

“ Owen Daw !” 

“ Yer honor !” 

“ Climb into the big tulip-tree softly and take this mus- 
ket I shall reach you. Train it on the staircase window, 
and fire only if you see resistance there.” 

The boy went up the tree with all his vicious instincts 
full of fight. 

“ Melson !” 

“ Ay yi !” 

“ Milman !” 

“ Ah ! boy.” 

“ Get yourselves beneath the two large windows on the 
hall and serve as mounting-blocks to Sorden’s party. I 
shall storm the main door. As we enter there, Sorden, 
order your men right over Melson and Milman into the 
windows Ransom has lifted.” 

“ I love him,” muttered Sorden, admiringly, “as I never 
loved A male,” and collected his party. 

“ Whitecar, you and your brother hold the back door 
with your staves. If it is forced, Miles Tindel — ” 

“Tackle ’em, Cap’n Van 1” - 

“ Will throw his red-pepper dust into the eyes of any 
that come out.” 

“Oh, tackle ’em, Cap’n Van !” 


428 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Derrick Molleston !” 

“ See me, O see me !” the powerful negro muttered. 

“Take Herron and Vincent, and two more, and guard 
the kitchen and the front of the main dwelling. Knock 
any creature stiff, except — ayme ! ay ! — the young dam- 
sels, whose fears will soon trip them to the ground.” 

“ See me, see me !” the negro hoarsely said. 

“ As we enter the door, I shall cry, ‘ Patty Cannon has 
come !’ Then spring in the windows and beat opposition 
down. Relampaguea ! Ransom is slow.” 

The knocker on the great door sounded, and it sprang 
open and quickly slammed again, and a stifled, strange 
sound followed, as of a scuffle. 

Van Dorn, agile as a panther, sprang on Milman’s 
back and looked into a window in the gable, drawing his 
face away, so as to be unseen in the night. 

The bright interior was full of people, sitting back 
against the wainscoting, as if listening to a sermon, while 
down the middle of the stately hall stretched a table 
lighted by whale-oil lamps and many little candles, and 
filled with the remnants of a feast. The stairway in the 
corner Van Dorn could not see, and there the dusky au- 
dience was all facing, as if towards the preacher. There 
seemed a something out of the common in the kind of 
attention the inmates were paying, but Van Dorn’s eyes 
were absorbed in the sight of several drooping and yet 
almost startled dove-eyed quadroon maids, and he only 
noticed that the spy, Ransom, could not be seen. 

“ Sorden,” Van Dorn said, slipping down, “can Ran- 
som have betrayed us ? Chis ! they all look as if a death- 
warrant was being read.” 

“ My skin ! No, Captain. Air they all there ?” 

“All,” said Van Dorn; “I see thirty thousand dollars 
of flesh in sigh*.” 

“And niggers won’t scrimmage nohow,” spoke White- 
car. “ Let’s beat ’em mos’ to death.” 


COWGILL HOUSE. 429 

“Come on then,” said Van Dorn, softly; “if the win- 
dows are not lifted, break them in.” 

He twisted, by main strength, a panel out of the palings 
near the house, and led the way to the great front door. 
A dozen desperate hands seized the heavy panel and ran 
with it. The door flew open, but at that moment every 
light in Cowgill House went out. 

“ Dar’s ghosts in dar,” the hoarse voice of Derrick 
Molleston was heard to say, and the negro element 
stopped and shrank. 

“Tindel, your torch !” Van Dorn exclaimed, and, after 
a moment’s delay — the old house and shady yard mean- 
time illumined by lightning, and sounds of thunder roll- 
ing in the sky — a blazing pine-knot, all prepared, was 
procured, and Van Dorn, holding it in his left hand, and 
with nothing but his rude whip in his right, bounded in 
the door, shouting : 

“ Patty Cannon has come !” 

At that dreaded name there were a few suppressed 
shrieks, and the great windows at the gable side fell in- 
-wards with a crash as the kidnappers came pouring over. 

Van Dorn’s quick eye took in the situation as he waved 
his torch, and it lighted ceiling and pilaster, the close-fast- 
ened doors on the left and the great stairway-well be- 
yond, filled with black forms in the attitude of defence. 

“ Patty Cannon has come !” he shouted again ; “follow 
me !” 

An instant only brought him to the base of the stair- 
case, and the lightning flashing in the gaping windows 
and fallen door revealed him to his followers, with his 
yellow hair waving, and his long, silken mustache like 
golden flame. 

A mighty yell rose from the emboldened gang as they 
formed behind him, with bludgeons and iron knuckles, 
billies and slings, and whatever would disable but fail to 
kill. 


the b;ntailed hat. 


43 ° 

Van Dorn, far ahead, made three murderous slashes 
of his whip across the human objects above, and, with a 
toss of that formidable weapon, clubbed it and darted on. 

At the moment loud explosions and smoke and cries 
filled the echoing place, as a volley of firearms burst 
from the landing, sweeping the line of the windows and 
raking the hall. The band on the floor below stopped, 
and some were down, groaning and cursing. 

“ They’re armed ; it’s treachery,” a voice, in panic, 
cried, and the cowardly assailants ran to places of refuge, 
some crawling out at the portal, some dropping from the 
windows, and others getting behind the stairway, out of 
fire, and seeking desperately to draw the bolts of the 
smaller door there. 

“ Patty Cannon has come !” Van Dorn repeated, throw- 
ing himself into the body of the defenders, who, terrified 
at his bravery, began to retreat upward around the angles 
of the stairs. 

One man, however, did not retreat, neither did he strike, 
but wrapped Van Dorn around the body in a pair of long 
and powerful arms, and lifted him from the landing by 
main strength, saying: 

“High doings, friend ! I’m concerned for thee.” 

Van Dorn felt at the grip that he was overcome. He 
tried to reach for his knife, but his arms were enclosed 
in the unknown stranger’s, who, having seized him from 
behind, sought to push him through the square window 
on the landing into the grass yard below, where the 
rain was falling and the lightning making brilliant play 
among the herbs and ferns. 

As the kidnapper prepared himself to fall, with all his 
joints and muscles relaxed, the boy, Owen Daw, lying 
bloodthirstily along the limb of the old tulip-tree, aimed 
his musket, according to Van Dorn’s instructions, at the 
forms contending there, and greedily pulled the trigger. 

The Quaker’s arms, as they enclosed Van Dorn, pre- 


COWGILL HOUSE. 


431 


sented, upon the cuff of his coat, a large steel or metal 
button, and the ball from the tree, striking this, glanced, 
and entered Van Dorn’s throat. 

“ Aymi / Guay Van Dorn muttered, and was thrown 
out of the window to the earth, all limp and huddled to- 
gether, till John Sorden bore him off, muttering, 

" I loved him as I never loved A male.” 

The desperate party beneath the stairs at last broke 
open the back door there and rushed forth, only to re- 
ceive handfuls of red pepper dust thrown by Miles Tin- 
del, as he cried, 

“Tackle ’em, Cap’n Van !” 

They screamed with anguish, and rolled in the wet 
grass, and yet, with fears stronger than pain, sought the 
road in blindness, and some way to leave the town. 

Young Owen O’Day, or Daw, crept down the tree, and, 
seeing Van Dorn in Sorden’s arms at the wagon, con- 
temptuously said, as he mounted his mule and vanished: 

“ I reckon he’ll never discipline me no mo’.” 

Derrick Molleston, regretting the loss of his loping 
horse, bore out to the wagon an object he had found striv- 
ing to escape from the veranda at the kitchen side, though 
with a gag in his mouth, and a skewer between his elbows 
and his back. 

“ See me, see me !” the negro kidnapper spoke, hoarse- 
ly. “He’s mine an’ Devil Jim Clark’s. I tuk him.” 

“Why, it’s Buck Ransom,” Sorden said. 

“ An’ I’m gwyn to sell him, too,” the negro muttered, 
seizing the reins. “You see me now! Maybe he cheat- 
ed us. Any way, he’s tuk.” 

The old wagon started at a run through the driving 
rain, the black victim lying helpless on his back, and 
Van Dorn bleeding in Sorden’s arms, who continued to 
moan, 

“I loved him as I never loved A male !” 

Van Dorn made several efforts to talk, and often 


432 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


coughed painfully, and finally, as they reached a lane 
gate, he articulated : 

“The Chancellor’s ?” 

“Yes, dis is it,” Derrick Mollestoh said. “See me, 
Cap’n Van. I’s all heah.” 

As they advanced up a shady lane, fire from some- 
where began to make a certain illumination in spite of 
the loud storm. 

“ It’s Bill Greenley. He’s set de jail afire,” the negro 
exclaimed. “ See me, O see me !” 

The conflagration gave a vapory red light to a secluded 
dwelling they now 7 approached, upon a bowery lawn, and 
Sorden saw a woman of a severe aspect looking out of a 
window at the fire. 

“ What is the meaning of this trespass so late at night?” 
she called. “Are you robbers? My aged husband is 
asleep.” 

“ Madam,” answered Sorden, “ here is the husband of 
Mrs. Patty Cannon. She was your brother’s mother-in- 
law. I love this man as I never loved A male. He is 
wounded, and we want him taken in till he can have a 
doctor.” 

“Take him to the jail, then, if that is not it burning 
yonder,” the woman exclaimed, scornfully. “ Shall I 
make the home of the Chancellor of Delaware a hospital 
for Patty Cannon’s men as a reward for her sending my 
brother to the gallows ?” 

She closed the window and the blind, and left them 
alone in the storm. ^ 

“Drive, Derrick, to your den at Cooper’s Corners, 
quick, then,” Sorden said. 

As they left the lane a flash of lightning, so near, so 
white, that they seemed to be within the volume and cra- 
ter of it, enveloped the wagon. One horse sank down on 
his haunches, and the other reared back and tore from 
his harness, while the wagon was overset. 


TWO WHIGS. 


433 


The negro picked up his helpless fellow- African and 
lifted him on his back, starting off in mingled avarice and 
terror, and saying, 

“ Derrick’s gwyn home, sho\ See me, see me !” 

Van Dorn put his finger at his throat, where blood was 
all the while trickling, and, with a gentle cough, extorted 
the sounds : 

“ Leave me — under a bush — to — die.” 

“ No,” cried Sorden, raising Van Dorn also upon his 
back ; “ I love him as I never loved A male.” 

The fire of the burning jail lighted their return into 
the outskirts of Dover and to the gallows’ hill, where 
stood the scaffold, split with the lightning from cross-beam 
to the death-trap. As they halted opposite it to rest, a 
horse and rider came stumbling past, and Molleston, 
dropping his burden, shouted : 

“ Bill Greenley, dat’s our hoss. We want it.” 

“ His is the hoss that’s on him,” cried the escaped 
horse-thief, looking scornfully up at his own gallows as 
he lashed his blinded animal along in the rain. 

“ Cheer up, Captain Van,” John Sorden said, soaked 
through with the rain ; “ ’t’ain’t fur now to Cooper’s Cor- 
ners.” 


Chapter XXXVI. 

TWO WHIGS. 

“ Goy ! Look at the trees, friend Custis,” said John 
M. Clayton, standing before his office as the rising sun 
innocently struck the tree-tops in the public square of 
Dover. 

Judge Custis, sitting at an upper window, observed that 
many noble elms and locusts had been riven by light- 
ning, or torn by wind and wind-driven floods of rain. 

“ What a night !” Custis exclaimed ; “ the jail burned, 
28 


434 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


the lightning appalling, and I thought I heard firearms, 
too.” 

Judge Custis heard Clayton say, as he entered the room : 

“ So ole Derrick Molleston, Aunt Braner, asked you 
about my dinner, did he ? And it’s Bill Greenley that 
burned the jail ? Goy ! And the black people licked the 
kidnappers at Cowgill House ?” 

“ Dat dey did, praise de Lord !” ejaculated Aunt Bra- 
ner, fervently. 

Clayton turned to a young man at the table, now dressed 
in a good clean suit of clothes, and said, as the old cook 
left the room : 

“ Now, friend Dennis, tell your tale. Goy !” 

The boy, whom the Judge was startled to recognize, at 
once began : 

“ Jedge Custis, the kidnapper man you left in the kitch- 
en has stole Aunt Hominy and your little niggers. They 
was at Johnson’s Cross-roads last night. Maybe they’s 
gone before this. My boat was hired to take ’em off, and 
I had to come along, but I run away from the band and 
give warnin’ last night to Mr. Clayton yer.” 

Before the Judge could reply, Clayton exclaimed, 

“Now, Brother Custis, permit me now ! Let my noble 
old constituent and fellow- Whig, Jonathan Hunn, resume !” 

“ Friend,” spoke out a wiry, lean, healthy-skinned man, 
“ this young man surprised me last night with intelligence 
that thy Maryland friends were marching on the very 
capital of Delaware, to steal men. I was out in the road 
at that late hour for another Christian purpose, and the 
Lord rewarded me with this good one : I brought friend 
Dennis to John Clayton’s back door, and he lent us all 
his firearms. At the little brick grocery of William Parke, 
just beyond the Cowgill House — where I am told he sells 
ardent liquors to negroes contrary to law, and so takes 
the name among them of ‘Kind Parke ’—I found several 
of our free Delaware negroes. I fear on no good errand. 


TWO WHIGS. 


435 


So I remarked, 4 If William Parke, contrary to law, has 
been selling thee brandy out of an eggshell, as if he knew 
not the contents, I shall pay him to repeat the vile entice- 
ment quickly, for ye who are of the world must fight this 
night.’ ” 

“Goy !” said Clayton, warming up; “Quakers will set 
other people on, won’t they ? Goy !” 

“ Other gunpowder arms were there procured, and we 
barricaded Cowgill House so as to make it at once a de- 
coy and a hornet’s nest. I despise war and men of war 
so much that I have somewhat studied their campaigns, 
and I suggested, friend Clayton, that the stairway was a 
good tactical defensive position — is that the vain term ? — 
to send a volley out the main door, and a flank fire on 
every door and window on the sides of Cowgill’s hall. It 
also commanded the back yard by a window on the stair- 
case. A door beneath the staircase was barricaded. 
There was a festival, or feast, given that night, by absent 
friend Cowgill’s permission, by these Dover folks of color. 
I would not wonder if it was designed or discovered by 
these scoundrels on thy line of states, friend Custis. I 
told the men-at-arms to leave their huzzies all below in 
the feasting-hall till the attack began, and then to let 
them escape up the stairway, and to defend that stair like 
sinful men. But first a negro spy knocked on the door, 
and a loop was thrown over his neck, and two of the 
black boys gagged him. Then the attack was made, and, 
at my order, all the lights were put out.” 

“Oh, Jedge,” Levin Dennis broke in, “it was short and 
dreadful ! Captain Van Dorn had got to the bottom of 
the stairs, when the niggers half-way up fired over his 
head and shot mos’ everything down. The Quaker man 
yer then pinioned the captain an’ dropped him, wounded, 
out of the high window. I pity Van Dorn, but he says 
that he’s in a bad business. I hope he ain’t dead.” 

“ Who is this Van Dorn ?” asked Judge Custis. “ I’ve 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


43 6 

heard of such a dare-devil, but he has never pestered 
Princess Anne.” 

“ I ran and hid in the deep eaves of the garret story,” 
Levin continued, “ which is built in like closets, and the 
wasps there, coming in to suck the blossoms on the 
vines that has growed up through the eaves from out- 
side, flew around in the dark among the yaller gals that 
was a-hidin’ and a-prayin’, and never feelin’ the wasps 
sting em’, thinkin’ about them kidnappers. I reckon, 
gen’lemen, the kidnappers will never come to Dover no 
more.” 

“Two things surprise me,” Clayton said; “that Joe 
Johnson would venture to raid Dover itself after the lick- 
ing I got him ; and that free darkeys could make such a 
defence.” 

“Ah! John Clayton,” spoke Jonathan Hunn, “there 
was a white witness there, to affirm that they only defend- 
ed their lives.” 

“It was Captain Van Dorn that raided Dover,” Levin 
spoke; “Joe Johnson is a coward.” 

“ Judge Custis,” said Mr. Clayton, “you and I can save 
this peninsula, at least, from the sectional excitements 
that are coming. You must surrender to Delaware old 
Patty Cannon and her household. She now lives on your 
side of the line. Come over to the Governor’s office with 
me, and I will get a requisition for her on the business 
of last night. Young Dennis here knows the band ; 
friend Hunn saw the attack.” 

Judge Custis’s face grew suddenly troubled. 

“ Clayton,” he said, “ I would rather not appear in this 
matter. Indeed, you must excuse me.” 

“What!” said Clayton; “hesitate to do a little thing 
like this, after the free opinions you have expressed ?” 

There was a long, awkward pause. The Quaker arose, 
and, looking well at Judge Custis, said : 

“None but Almighty God knows the secrets of a slave- 


TWO WHIGS. 437 

holder’s mind. No son of Adam is fit to be absolute 
over any human creature.” 

“Amen !” Judge Custis said, meekly. 
******* 

The news from Princess Anne confirmed the loss of 
Vesta Custis’s slaves. Judge Custis was told to come 
home and take steps for their recovery, but he was 
strangely apathetic. The day after the raid Levin Den- 
nis disappeared, Clayton only saying : 

“ Who would have thought that soft-eyed boy was al- 
ready fascinated by these kidnappers ? He has taken his 
horse and gone back to Patty Cannon’s.” 

The suit against the Canal Company required a great 
deal of research, as law-books were then scarce, and prec- 
edents for breaches of contract against corporations were 
not many ; this form of legal life being comparatively 
modern in that day, like the dawn of the floral age, or be- 
fore megatheriums grazed above the trees or iguanodons 
swam in the canals. Clayton and Custis walked and ate 
and lay down together, comparing knowledge and sugges- 
tions, and the litigious mind of John Randel, Junior, was 
rather irritating to both of them, so that, to be rid of his 
society in Dover, the two lawyers, meantime supplied with 
money by Meshach Milburn’s draft, resolved to visit the 
canal, which was distant about thirty miles. 

The three men started together in a carriage, after 
breakfast, on a soft yet frosty morning, such as often 
gives to this region a winter sparkle and mildness like 
the Florida climate. They passed several tidal creeks, 
as the Duck and the Little Duck, the Blackbird and the 
Apoquinimink, and, as they advanced, the barns became 
larger, the hedges more tasteful and trimmed like those 
in the French Netherlands, the leafless peach orchards 
stretched out like the tea-plants in China. Two or three 
little towns studded the roadside, the woods gave way al- 
together to smaller farms, and, at a steep bottom called 


The entailed hat. 


438 

the Fiddler’s Bridge, they turned across the fields to an 
old four-chimneyed, galleried mansion, at the end of a 
long lane, and near a great stagnant pond, where John 
Randel, Junior, as he fully named himself on every oc- 
casion, had a fine dinner spread. 

After dinner they launched upon the stream in a row 
and sail boat, to Mr. Clayton’s trepidation, and bore out 
through acres of splutter-docks, and muskrats and terra- 
pins unnumbered, and many wild-fowl, to the Chesapeake 
and Delaware Canal, which extended for several miles 
through a mighty pond or feeder, like a ditch within a 
bayou. 

The negro rower tied their boat behind a passing ves- 
sel, which towed them out to the locks at the Delaware 
River, at a point opposite a willowy island, and where an 
embryo “ city ” had been started in the marshes, and 
there they waited for the packet from Philadelphia. Mr. 
Randel took his negro man, a person of sorrowful yet in- 
expressive countenance, to be a kind of piano or model 
on which to play his fierce gestures. 

“ Clayton,” said he, sitting on a stone lock in the even- 
ing gloaming, “ I ought to have been a lawyer. Not that 
I am not the greatest theoretical engineer in the country, 
but my legal genius interposes, and I sue the villains who 
employ me.” 

Here he gave the melancholy negro a violent shaking, 
who took it as stolidly as a bottle of medicine shaken by 
the doctor. 

“Yes, you sued Judge Ben Wright and he nonsuited 
you.” 

“I tell you a new axiom, Clayton,” the earnest engi- 
neer cried, putting the negro down on his hams and sit- 
ting on him ; “whoever employs genius has to be a scoum 
drel. In the nature of their relations it is so. He de- 
flects genius from its full expression, absorbs the virtue 
from it, and is a fraud.” 


I-WO WHIGS. 


439 

Here he kicked the negro underneath him, who hardly 
protested. 

“Well, then,” spoke Judge Custis, “as Clayton is a man 
of genius, and you employ him — ” 

“ I’m a scoundrel, of course,” Randel exclaimed. “ His 
sense of law and right must yield to my ideas. Now 
look at this canal ! Had I not been obliged to defer to 
the soulless corporation which employed me, I would 
have dug it to the depth that the tides of the two bays 
would have filled it, instead of damming up the creeks for 
feeders, and pumping water into it by steam-pumps. Then 
the war-vessels of the country could go through, and the 
channel would be purged by every tide.” 

He stood up and put his foot on the negro, to the 
amusement of the boys gathering around. 

“John Fitch, the engineer,” said John M. Clayton, 
“left a curious will; it begins, ‘To William Rowan, my 
trusty friend, I bequeath my Beaver Hat.’ ” 

Judge Custis’s countenance fell, thinking of another 
hat which had entered his family. 

The barge on which they embarked had numerous pas- 
sengers, and soon came to a small lock-town and turn- 
bridge, and, a few miles beyond, entered upon a serious 
piece of work, leaving the trough of a creek, of which the 
canal had previously availed itself, and cutting through 
the low ridge of the peninsula, which, to Judge Custis, 
seemed almost mountainous. He was of that patriotic 
opulence, just short of imagination, which rejoiced in pub- 
lic works, and this little canal, only fourteen miles long, 
was, with two or three exceptions, the only achieved work 
in the Union, turnpikes and bridges omitted. Built by 
the national government, by three of the states it con- 
nected, and by private subscription, it had involved two 
and a quarter million dollars of expense — no light bur- 
den when the population was, by the previous census, less 
than eight million whites in all the land. 


446 


THE ENTAILED HA'f. 


Judge Custis’s family troubles faded from his mind as 
he looked up at the deep cutting, nearly seventy feet in 
height of banks, with sands of yellow and green, and 
stains of iron and strata of marl, some of which had fallen 
back into the excavation and threatened the navigation 
again ; and, when he saw a bridge, called the Buck, leap 
the chasm ninety feet overhead, by a span that then 
seemed sublimity itself, he touched Clayton and said : 

“ Never mind my failures ! Thank God, I’m a Whig.” 

“ Goy ! there’s nothing like it,” said Clayton. 

Not far from this point the canal passed an old church 
and graveyard at a bridge where Mr. Clayton said his 
namesake, the revolutionary Governor of Delaware, was 
buried. Here Randel’s plain conveyance took them in, 
and in the moonlight they drove a few miles to Mr. Ran- 
del’s estate, near the banks of a river, under a long table- 
mountain of barren clay and iron stain, on the farther 
shore. 

“ Here,” said Randel, “ is my future estate of Randalia. 
“ Here I shall see all the commerce of the canal passing 
by, and garnishee every vessel that pays my tolls to the 
Canal Company.” 

“ Randel,” asked Mr. Clayton, “ what were those stakes 
I saw some distance back, running north and south across 
the fields?” 

“ A railroad survey.” 

“ Who is making it ?” 

“ They say Meshach Milburn, of Princess Anne.” 

“ Goy !” exclaimed Clayton, “ I’ll beat him.” 
******* 

For two or three days the three men, still studying the 
canal suit, drove over a picturesque country, visiting the 
old manor of the Labadists* and their Bohemian patron, 
Augustine Herman, the homestead of the late treaty min- 
ister, Bayard, and the ancient Welsh Baptist churches 
among the hills of the Elk and Christiana, where some 


SPIRITS OF THE PAST. 


44 1 


of Cromwell’s warriors lay. It was the favorite land of 
Whitefield, and in the neighborhood was an iron furnace 
Judge Custis examined with melancholy interest, as one 
of the investments of General Washington’s father more 
than a hundred years before, when the Indians made the 
iron; They also went to Turkey Point, where the British 
army was disembarked to capture Philadelphia, and Knyp- 
hausen’s division obliterated the history of Delaware by 
carrying her records away from Newcastle. Returning 
from one of these pleasant journeys, two messages from 
different points seared Judge Custis’s eyeballs : 

“Your wife died at Cambridge.” “ Your daughter is 
very ill at Wilmington.” 

“ To Wilmington !” cried Judge Custis, staggering up. 
“Oh, my daughter! I have killed her.” 


Chapter XXXVII. 

SPIRITS OF THE PAST. 

“What do they say, William, about Jack Wonnell’s 
being found shot dead ?” 

“It is generally said that he was killed by the negroes 
for gallantries to their color. Some talk of arresting little 
Roxy Custis.” 

“ What do you say, William Tilghman?” 

“ I can say nothing. The night I drove Virgie to Snow 
Hill I drove over poor Wonnell’s body. A strange negro 
was seen here — an enemy of your servant, Samson. The 
new cook at Teackle Hall thinks he fired the shot.” 

The young rector felt.the searching look of those resin- 
ous forester’s eyes staring him through. 

“That shot was meant for me, William Tilghman.” 

“ Perhaps so.” 

“ It was the shot of a hired murderer, who mistook 


442 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


Wonnell’s unusual hats for mine, that was not well de- 
scribed to him, or the description of which his drunken 
and excited memory did not retain.” 

“ Mr. Milburn, please save Vesta this suspicion.” 

“ Oh ! that pure soul could not know it,” Milburn con- 
tinued, with a moment’s gentleness ; “ but some of her 
proud kin, to whom I am less than a dog, did send the 
assassin. I think I guess the man.” 

“ Do not rush to a conclusion ! Remember, Vesta has 
suffered so much for others’ errors.” 

“ He was killed in this room, where Wonnell never came 
before. The wound shows the shot to have come from 
a point below, where nothing but WonnelFs hat, and not 
his features, could be seen. The mistake of bell-crown 
for steeple-top shows that it was a stranger’s job : the 
poor fool died for me. Now where did the bungler who 
killed me by proxy come from ?” 

“ I will be frank with you, sir. Joe Johnson, the kid- 
napper, was also here : Mary says so. To save Virgie 
from him, I helped her away.” 

“Now,” said Milburn, “ what enemy of mine delegated 
the kidnapper to procure a murderer?” 

He waited a moment without response, and answered, 
in a low tone of voice, his own question : 

“The man is at Johnson’s Cross Roads: letters from 
Cambridge tell me so. It was the deceased Mrs. Cus- 
tis’s brother, Allan McLane.” 

“ Again I ask you to think of Vesta and her many sac- 
rifices !” 

“ I do. I have promised her that she shall never re- 
ceive a cruel word from me. But I shall not spare my 
assassins. To them I shall be as one they have killed, 
and whose blood smokes for vengeance. I possess 
the only warrant that can drive them from Mary- 
land.” 

He laid a roll of bank-notes on the table suggestively. 


Spirits of the past. 


443 


“ No wealth is accumulated in vain,” said Meshach 
Milburn, his delicate nostrils distended and his fine hand 
pointing to the bank-bills. “Now, war on Johnson’s 
Cross Roads !” 

He crossed the old room over the store, and, opening 
the green chest, brought out the Entailed Hat, and took 
it in his hand with a grim smile. 

“ Here is something I thought to lay aside on my wife’s 
account,” he spoke. “ Her people compel me to wear 
it ! I thought all malice to this poor hat would be done 
with my social triumph here. But I am not a man to be 
frightened. Let them kill me, but it shall be under my 
ancestral brim.” 

“ Oh ! hear your mocking-bird sing again as it did : 
‘Vesta — Meshach — Love!’ Where is the bird?” 

Meshach Milburn shook his head and put the Entailed 
Hat upon it. “ Tom left me,” he said, “ when they be- 
gan to fire bullets at my Hat.” 

******* 

Vesta’s female instinct had already found the explana- 
tion of Wonnell’s death. 

From the moment of knowing her husband, his fatal 
hat had been the shadow across her life’s path. His 
person had never been offensive to her, and something 
attractive or modifying in him had led her, when a child, 
to offer a flower to his hat, to give it consonance with 
himself, that seemed to deserve less evil. 

A fancied insult to his hat had made him quarrel with 
her father, a quarrel which involved her conquest, not by 
wooing, but by the treaty of war. The same hat had in- 
spired the superstition which led her kitchen servants to 
leave their comfortable home, and had been the insuper- 
able obstacle to her mother’s consent to her marriage. 
It had caused the only bitter words that ever passed be- 
tween her and her father. At last it had spilled blood, 
and her uncle, she well knew, from his implacable nature, 


444 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


had set the ruffians on, and she knew as well that her 
husband had found him out. 

His intelligence, which would have been otherwise a 
matter of pride to her, became a subject of fear, involved 
with his hat. 

Then, the loss of Virgie was hardly less severe to Vesta 
than her own mother’s. 

It was true that Roxy, pretty and loving, now poured 
all her devotion at her mistress’s feet, but there had been 
something in Virgie that Roxy could never rise to — a dig- 
nity and self-reliance hardly less than a white woman’s. 
Vesta shed bitter tears at the news of that dear comfort- 
er’s flight, and on her knees,, praying for the delicate 
young wanderer, she felt God’s conviction of the sins 
of slavery. Alas ! thousands felt the same who would 
not admit the conviction, and gave excuses that welded 
into one nation, at last, the sensitive millions who could 
not agree to a lesser sacrifice, but were willing to give 
war. 

A little note from Snow Hill told Vesta that her maid 
had already departed, and would only write again from 
free soil. 

So the upbraided hat was worn more often than before, 
and Vesta had to suffer much humiliation for it. Her 
husband now moved actively to organize his railroad, and 
visited the Maryland towns of the peninsula, taking her 
along, and wearing on the journey his King James tile, 
now swathed in mourning crape. 

At Cambridge, which basked upon the waters like an 
English Venice, he applied the sinews of war to a listless 
public sentiment, and the county press began to call for 
Joe Johnson’s expulsion, and Patty Cannon’s rendition 
to the State of Delaware. At Easton, lying between the 
waters on her treasures of marl, like a pearl oyster, the 
people turned out to see the little man in the peaked hat, 
with the beautiful lady at his side ; and Vesta was more 


SPIRITS OF THE PAST. 


445 


pained for her husband than herself, to feel that his outre 
dress was prejudicing his railroad, as business, no less 
than beauty, revolts from any outward affectation. At 
the old aristocratic homes on the Wye River, more scowls 
than smiles were bestowed on the eccentric parvenu ; and 
at Chestertown, where originated the Peales who drew 
this hat into their museum, the boys burned tar-barrels 
on the market space, and marched, in hats of brown loaf- 
sugar wrappers, like Meshach’s, before the dwelling of 
Vesta’s host. 

The greater the opposition, the more indomitable Mil- 
burn grew to live it down. He wrote to her father to go 
to Annapolis and work for a railroad charter and state 
aid, and began grading for his line in the vicinity of his 
old store at Princess Anne, throwing the first shovelful 
of earth himself, with the immemorial hat upon his sconce. 
This time there were no shouts, and he almost regretted 
it, seeming to feel that jeers carry no deep malice, while 
silence is hate. 

Loyal to her least of vows, and wishing to love and 
obey him in spirit fully, Vesta felt that his own good-nat- 
ure was being darkened again by his obstinacy upon this 
single point of an obsolete hat. 

He looked, in their evening circle at Teackle Hall, 
like a younger and knightlier person, in a modern suit of 
clothes, and slippers of Vesta’s gift. His delicate hand 
well became the ring she put upon it, and, when he talked 
high enthusiasm and sense, and stood ready to back 
them with courage and money, Vesta thought her hus- 
band lacked but one thing to make him the equal of his 
supposititious kinsman, the democratic martyr in the sev- 
enteenth century, and that was another head-dress. She 
almost feared to broach the subject, knowing that an 
old sore is ever the most sensitive, and being too di- 
rect and frank to insinuate or practise any arts upon 
him. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


446 

She was embroidering an evening-cap of velvet for him 
one day when Mrs. Tilghman sent a hat-box, and in it 
was a fine new hat of the current style. He answered 
her letter politely, and put the new hat upon the rack of 
Teackle Hall, and never touched it again. 

Next, Rhoda Holland, his niece, procuring, from some 
country beau, a beaver-skin — and beavers were growing 
scarce and dear in that peninsula — had him an elegant 
cap made of it for the cold weather now coming ; but he 
only kfssed her and put it on the rack, and there it tempt- 
ed the moth. 

His chills and fever continued at broken times, but 
more regular became the dislike and opposition of the 
old class of society as he undertook to become the pro- 
moter of his region. They regarded it as audacity worse 
than crime : he had outstripped them in wealth, and now 
was undermining their importance. Many avowed that 
they would never ride on a railroad built by such a man ; 
others hoped it would break him ; some took open ground 
against his work, and wrote letters to Annapolis to preju- 
dice him with the Legislature, where the Baltimore inter- 
est was already crying loudly that an Eastern Shore rail- 
road meant to take Maryland trade and money to Phila- 
delphia. Meshach fiercely responded that, unless the 
railway took the line of the Maryland counties, Delaware 
state would build it and carry it off to Newcastle instead 
of to Elkton, where Meshach meant to unite with a pro- 
jected Baltimore system. Prudently estimating the 
sparseness of his fortune to execute a hundred miles of 
embankment and railroad, Milburn yet kept up a display 
Of surveyors and graders in several counties, and his local 
patriotism had at least the appreciation of Vesta’s little 
circle. 

In the meantime the continued absence of Samson sur- 
prised him, and Judge Custis’s letters were irregular and 
long coming as he went farther north, while two letters 


SPIRITS OF THE PAST. 


447 


received by the Widow Dennis were as mystical as they 
were assuring : one, in a female hand, told her that her 
son Levin was being tenderly watched, and another, in 
man’s writing, enclosed some money, and said her son 
would soon be home. Mrs. Dennis was far from happy 
in this indefinite state of mind, and her heart told her, 
also, that the absence of James Phoebus was a different 
strain. She loved that absentee already too well to for- 
give his silence. 

One day, before November, Vesta said to her husband : 

“ The air and sky are warm and sparkling yet, and the 
roses are out. You work too hard between your canal 
case and your railroad. Let us fill the two carriages and 
drive to old Rehoboth, and eat our dinner there.” 

He consented, and they took with them Grandmother 
Tilghman and William, Rhoda Holland, Roxy, and Mrs. 
Dennis, and also the poor free woman, Mary, whom Jim- 
my Phoebus had released from her chains. 

The road passed in sight of the birthplace of the lion 
of independence in Maryland, Samuel Chase, who forced 
that hesitating state, by threatenings and even riots, to 
declare for permanent separation from England, as Henry 
Winter Davis, by the same means, eighty-five years after- 
wards, forced her rebels against the Union to show their 
hands. 

Near Chase’s birthplace, on the glebe, rose the old 
Washington Academy, out in a field, raised in that early 
republican day when a generous fever for education, fol- 
lowing the act of tolerance, made some noble school- 
houses that the growth of towns ultimately discouraged. 
With four great chimneys above its conical roof, and pedi- 
ments and cupola, and two wide stories, and high base- 
ment, all made in staid, dark brick, the academy yet had 
a mournful and neglected look, as if, like man, it was 
ruminating upon the more brutalized times and lessening 
enlightenment false systems ever require. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


448 

“ Ah !” said Vesta’s husband, “ how many a poor boy 
thou hast sent from yonder mutilated for life, honey, like 
the lovers of the queen bee.” 

“How is that?” Vesta inquired. 

“You never heard of the queen bee? Women, when 
they die, may turn to bees, and reverse their hard condi- 
tions in this life. The queen bee has no rival in the hive; 
all other females there are immature, and all the males 
are dying for the queen. She has five hundred lovers, so 
lovesick for her that they never work, and forty times as 
many maids, like Penelope’s, all embroidering comb and 
wax.” 

“ How was that proved ?” 

“ By putting the bees in a glass house and watching 
them. To God all mankind may be in a glass hive, too, 
and every buzzer’s secret biography be kept.” 

“ And the queen bee’s honeymoon ?” 

“ From her that word is taken. She flies high into the 
air and meets a lover by chance; she has so many that 
one is sure to be met ; she kisses him in that crystal eddy 
of sunshine, and, in the transport, he is wounded to the 
heart. How many young drones from the academy have 
seen thee once and swooned for life !” 

“ But the queen bee also has a fate some time, sir?” 

“Yes. She leaves the ancient hive at last, and settles 
on an unsightly forest-tree somewhere, and all that love 
her follow : the long-neglected herb becomes busy with 
music and sweetness, and the flashing of silver wings, till 
into some gum-tree cone the farmer gathers the swarm, 
and it is their home.” 

Vesta looked up at the poetical illustration, and saw 
her husband’s conical hat, into which she had been 
hived, and her eyes fell to her mourning weeds. 

“ Oh, my father !” she thought ; “ has he kept his good 
resolutions ! It is all I have left to hope for.” 

They travelled down the aisles of the level forest, some* 


SPIRITS OF THE PAST. 


449 


times the holly-trees, in their green leafage and red fruit, 
sometimes the cleanly pine-tree’s green, enriching the 
brown concavity of oaks ; and at the scattered settle- 
ment of Kingston, the Jackson candidate for governor, 
Mr. Carroll, bowed from his door. Crossing Morumsco 
Creek, they bore to the east, and soon saw, on a plain, 
the still animate ecclesiastical hamlet of Rehoboth, ex- 
tending its two ancient churches across the vision. 

The road ran to the bank of the River Pocomoke, 
where a ferry was still maintained to the opposite shore 
and the Virginia land of Accomac, and the cold tide, 
without a sail, went winding to an oystery estuary of the 
bay, where the mud at the bottom was so soft that ves- 
sels aground in it could still continue sailing, as on the 
muggy globe that Noah came to shore in. 

Close by were oyster-shells high as a natural bluff, 
made by the Indian gourmands before John Smith’s voy- 
age of navigation. 

Vesta was set out at the great, ruined Episcopal church 
that, like a castle of brick, made the gateway of Reho- 
both ; while William Tilghman and Rhoda strolled into 
the open door of the brick Presbyterian church farther 
on, and Milburn put up the horses at the tavern. 

“ William,” Rhoda asked, “ was this the first Presby- 
terian church ever made yer?” 

“ The first in America, Rhoda. This was Rev. Francis 
Makemie’s church. He lived in Virginia, not far from 
here, where no other worship was permitted but ours, so 
he came over the Pocomoke and reared a church of logs 
at this point, and this is the third or fourth church-build- 
ing upon the spot. Rehoboth then came to be such a 
point for worship that the Established Church put up 
yonder noble old edifice, as if to overawe this Calvinistic 
one, in 1735 -” 

“ It’s a quare old house,” said Rhoda. “ The little 
doors that opens from the vlestiblule into the side galler- 
29 


45 ° 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


ies sent a draught right down the preacher’s back at the 
fur end, and when he give out the hymn , 4 Blow ye the 
trumpet, blow,’ he always blowed his nose twice. So they 
boarded up the galleries and let the ceiling down flat, 
and if we go up thar we can see the other old round ceil- 
ing, William.” 

So they went up the narrow stairs from the door, and 
came into the tubes of galleries all closed from the con- 
gregation, and there, sitting down in the obscurity, the 
preacher passed his arm around Rhoda’s waist. 

“Take keer,” she said; “maybe you was predestined 
to be lost yer. I’m skeered to be up yer half in the dark, 
even with a good man.” 

Nevertheless, she came a little closer to him, and looked 
into his eyes with her arch, demure ones. The young 
rector suddenly kissed her. 

“ You’ve brought it on yourself, Rhoda, by looking so 
pretty in this stern old place of creeds and catechisms. 
Could you love me if I asked you ?” 

“ You couldn’t love me true, William. Your heart is in 
t’other old church among the bats and foxes, where Aunt 
Vesty sits this minute.” 

“ No, my sorrow is there, Rhoda. I am trying to build 
a nest for my heart. We all must love.” 

“William, I don’t think a young man in love can re- 
member so much history when he’s sittin’ in the dark by 
his gal.” 

“ Love among the ruins is always melancholy, Rhoda.” 

“Yes, William, and your love comes out of ’em : the 
ruins of your old first love. I couldn’t make you happy.” 

“ Try,” said William ; “ my fancy wavers towards you. 
You are a beautiful girl.” 

“Yes,” said Rhoda, practically, “it’s time I was gittin’ 
married. I think I’ll take you on trial, and watch Aunt 
Vesty to see if she is jealous of me.” 

All differences of education passed away, when, stand- 


SPIRITS OF THE PAST. 


451 

ing for a moment with this tall, willowy girl in his arms, 
her ardent nature in the blush of uncertainty, her very 
coquetry languishing, like health taking religion captive, 
the rector of Princess Anne felt that there is no medicine 
for love but love. 

They walked together around the square old edifice, 
among the graves of Tilghmans, Drydens, Revells, and 
Beauchamps, and saw the round-capped windows and 
double doors in arched brick, and, passing back along the 
road, entered the enclosure of the grand old Episcopal 
church, which was nearly eighty feet long, and presented 
its broadside of blackish brick, and double tier of spa- 
cious windows, to the absolute desertion of this forest 
place. 

The churchyard was a copse of gum-tree and poplar 
suckers, and berry bushes, with apple-trees and cedars 
and wild cherry-trees next above, and higher still the 
damp sycamores and maples, growing out of myrtle near- 
ly knee-deep upon the waves of old graves. 

In beautiful carpentry, the thirteen windows on this 
massive side upheld in their hand-worked sashes more 
than four hundred panes of dim glass, and two great win- 
dows in the gable had fifty panes each, and stood firm, 
though the wall between them, fifty feet in width, had 
fallen in, and been replaced with poorer workmanship. 
In the opposite gable was another door that had been 
forced open, and, as they stepped across the sill, a crack, 
like ice first stepped upon, went splitting the long and 
lofty vacancy with warning rumbles. 

Now the whole interior, in fine perspective, stood ex- 
posed, at least seventy-five by fifty feet, like a majestic 
hall unbroken by any side-galleries, and with double sto- 
ries of windows shedding a hazy light, and, at the distant 
end, a low pulpit, with spacious altar. The walls of this 
neglected temple were two feet thick, and its high ceiling 
was kept from falling down by ten rude wooden props of 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


452 

recent rough carpentry ; the pews were stately, high- 
fenced things, numbered in white letters on a black ground, 
and each four-sided, to contain ten persons ; the rotting 
damask cushions in many of them told of a former aris- 
tocracy, while now all the congregation could be assem- 
bled in a single pew, and worship was unknown but once 
a year, when the bishop came to read his liturgy to dust 
and desolation. 

So, on the opposite western cape of the Chesapeake, 
shivered the Roman priests of Calvert’s foundation, in 
the waste of old St. Mary’s ; the folds had left the shep- 
herds, and fifty people only came to worship in the kirk 
of the earliest Presbyterians. 

Two tall, once considered elegant, stoves were nearly 
midway up the cracking church-floor ; and Mary, the free 
woman, had made a fire in one of them, and the pine 
wood was roaring, and the long height of pipe was 
smoking. Startled by the fire, a venerable opossum 
came out of one of the pews, and waggled down the aisle, 
like a gray devotee who had said his prayers, and feared 
no man. 

Vesta was reading her prayer-book aloud near the 
stove to the pretty widow and Grandmother Tilghman. 
In a few moments the young rector emerged from a curi- 
ous old gallery for black people, by the door, wearing his 
surplice ; and he read the service at the desk, plaintive 
and simple, Milburn and his group responding in the 
room a thousand might have worshipped in. 

“ Cousin Vesta,” the minister said, after the service, 
“ Miss Holland is going to try to love me. Mr. Milburn, 
may I address her ?” 

“She is a wilful piece,” Meshach said; “you must 
school her first. Let my wife give my consent.” 

Vesta went to both, and kissed them : 

“ I feel so much encouraged, dear Rhoda and William, 
to see love beginning all about me. Now, Norah, if you 


SPIRITS OF THE PAST. 453 

could be just to James Phoebus, who is proving his love 
to you, perhaps, with his life !” 

“ Yes, that is a match I approve of,” said Grandmother 
Tilghman, “ but I don’t want Bill to marry. Disappointed 
men make rash selections.” 

“Oh,” said Rhoda, “don’t conglatulate him too soon; 
I haven’t tuk him yet. He’s goin’ teach me outen the 
books, and I’ll teach him outen the forest.” 

They walked together to the river bank, and Mrs. Den- 
nis had the poor woman, Mary, tell the adventures of 
Jimmy Phoebus to save her from slavery. All were deeply 
moved. 

“Now, Norah,” Grandmother Tilghman said, “the mo- 
ment that man comes back you go to him and kiss him, 
and say, ‘ James, you have been the only father to my 
son. Do you want me to be your wife?’ This world is 
made for marrying, Norah. Women have no other career. 
Nature does not value the brain of Shakespeare, but keeps 
the seed of every vagrant plant warm, and marries every- 
thing.” 

“Well,” said Vesta, “Norah loves James Phoebus; 
don’t you, Norah?” 

The widow blushed. 

“ Take him, my pretty neighbor,” said Milburn. 

As they all looked at her, she suddenly cried : 

“ I want to, indeed. I would have done so before, but 
I am superstitious. Who is it that feeds me so mysteri- 
ously ?” 

“ Has he been coming of late ?” asked Mrs. Tilgh- 
man. 

“ No, not since you were married, Vesta.” 

“Then I think it will come no more,” Milburn said. 
“ You have waited longer than I did.” 

His eyes sought his wife’s. He added : 

“ Will I ever be more than your husband ?” 

“Yes,” said Grandmother Tilghman, with a special 


454 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


effort, " when you wear a hat a young wife is not ashamed 
of.” 

All felt a cold thrill at these words from the blind 
woman. Milburn said, gravely, 

“ How can you know about hats, when you cannot see 
them ?” 

“Oh,” said Grandmother, herself a little frightened, 
“ that hat I think I can smell.” 

******* 

That same night, in Princess Anne, Mrs. Dennis, in 
her little cottage, undressed herself by a fragment of 
hearth-fire that now and then flashed upon the picture 
of her husband, as he had left her sixteen years before, 
when Levin was a baby — a rich blonde, youthful man, 
dressed in naval uniform, like Decatur, whose birthplace 
was so near his own. 

His golden hair curled upon his forehead, his blue 
eyes were full of handsome daring, and his red, pouting 
mouth was like a woman’s ; upon his arm a corded cha- 
peau was held, epaulettes tasselled his shoulders, his rich 
blue coat was slashed with gold along the wide lappels, 
and stood stiffly around his neck and fleecy stock and 
fan-shaped shirt-ruffles. He seemed to be a mere boy, 
but of the mettle which made American officers and pri- 
vateersmen of his days the only guerdons of the repub- 
licanism of the seas against the else universal dominion 
of England. 

This portrait, the last of her family possessions, was 
the young sailor’s parting gift to her when he sailed in 
the Ida , leaving her a mere girl, with his son upon her 
breast. The picture hung above the lowly door, the bolt 
whereof was never fastened in that serene society, and 
seldom is to this day. 

Mrs. Dennis knelt upon the bare floor, and raised her 
branching arms, white as her spirit, to the lover of her 
youth : 


SPIRITS OF THE PAST. 


455 

“Oh, thou I have adored since God gave me to feel 
the beauty and strength of man in my childhood, if I 
have ever looked on man but thee with love or wavering, 
rebuke me now for the offence I am to do, if such it be, 
in choosing another father for thy boy !” 

A low wail seemed to be breathed upon the midnight 
from somewhere near, and a sick man’s cough seemed to 
break the perfect silence. The widow’s hand instinct- 
ively covered her bosom as she listened, and, deep in the 
spirit of her prayer, she continued : 

“ Oh, Bowie, if thou livest, let me know ! May I not live 
to see thee come and find me in another’s arms ; thy look 
would kill me. If thou art detained by enemies, by sav- 
age people, or by foreign love, no matter what thy errors, 
I will still be true ! Give me some token by the God 
that has thee in his keeping, whether thou best on the 
ocean’s floor or lookest from the stars. If thou art dead, 
love of my youth, assure me, oh, I pray thee !” 

The wail and hacking cough seemed to be repeated 
very near. A footstep seemed to come. 

The door flew open, and in the moonlight stood a man, 
pale as a ghost, of bandit look, with Spanish-looking gar- 
ments, and head and neck tied up with cerements, like 
wounded people in the cockpits of ships of war. 

He bent upon her the eyes of the portrait above the 
door. How changed ! how like ! There seemed upon 
his throat the stain of blood. 

The widow, fascinated, frozen still, let fall her arms of 
ivory, and, as she gazed, her beautiful neck, strained in 
horror and astonishment, received upon its snow the rapt- 
ure of Diana’s shine. 

The efligy, so like her husband, yet so altered, reached 
towards her his hand, on which a diamond caught the 
moon, and seemed to drink it. A wail, like the others 
she had heard, broke from his lips, and said the words : 

“ To lose those charms ! To lose that heart ! O God !’* 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


456 

As thus he stood, ghastly and supplicating, as if he 
would fall and die upon her threshold, another hand 
came forward in the moonlight, and drew the door be- 
tween them. A voice she had not heard tenderly ex- 
claimed : 

“ I love him as I never loved A male !” 

“ It is my husband’s spirit,” the widow breathed. “ I 
cannot marry.” 

She swooned upon her floor, before the dying fire. 


Chapter XXXVIII. 
virgie’s flight. 

Snow Hill, when Virgie looked forth upon it, almost 
seemed built on snow, a white sand composing the streets, 
gardens, and fields, though the humid air brought vegeta- 
tion even from this, and vines clambered, willows drooped, 
flowers blossomed, on winter’s brink, and great speckled 
sycamores, like freckled giants, and noble oaks, rose to 
heights betokening rich nutrition at their roots. 

Heat and moisture and salt had made the land habita- 
ble, and the wind from a receded sea had piled up the 
sand long ago into mounds now covered with verdure, 
which the freak or fondness of the manor owner had 
called a hill, and put his own name thereto, perhaps with 
memories of old Snow Hill in London. 

Upon this apparent bank or hill two venerable churches 
stood, both of English brick, the Episcopalian, covered 
with ivy, and the Presbyterian, which had given its name 
to the first synod of the Kirk in the new world, and now 
stood, surrounded with gravestones, where the visitor 
might read Scottish names left to orphans at Worcester, 
as yonder at the Episcopate graveyard, names left to 
English orphans in the same rolling tide of blood ; and 


virgie’s flight. 


457 

Worcester was the name of the county, as the court and 
jail might tell. 

Hidden in the sand, like Benjamin’s cup in the bag 
of flinty corn, a golden lustre yet seemed to betray Snow 
Hill, as the sun rose into its old trees, and woke the liquid- 
throated birds, and finally made the old brick and older 
whitewashed houses gleam, and exhale a soft, blue smoke. 
Virgie heard a sound as of hoofs upon a bridge, and saw, 
across the lily-bordered river, the Custis carriage winding 
up a golden road. 

“ Alone !” said Virgie ; “ love has gone. Now I must 
live for freedom.” 

“ Breakfast, Miss,” spoke a neat, kind-faced, yet ready 
woman, of Virgie’s own size and color ; “ my husband is 
going to drive you out of town before any of the white 
people are up to see you.” 

At the table was a mulatto man, whom the woman 
introduced as her husband. 

“ Mrs. Hudson,” Virgie said, “ you are doing so much 
for me ! may the good Lord pay you back !” 

“ Oh, no,” replied the woman, “ I am always up at this 
hour. I work hard, because I am trying to buy my 
mother, who is still a slave.” 

“ How came you free ?” Virgie asked, wistfully. 

“ I saved a sick gentleman’s life, and he bought me for 
it, and gave me my freedom. See, I have a pass that 
tells the color of my eyes and skin, my weight, and ev- 
erything. With this I can go into Delaware and the free 
states. I wish you had one, Miss Virgie.” 

“Oh, Mrs. Hudson, I dearly wish I had. Let me read it. 
Why, I could almost pass for you, from this description.” 

“ Indeed you could,” the housewife said ; “ we are not 
of the same age, but white people don’t read a pass very 
careful.” 

“ How I would love anybody that could get me such a 
pass 1° 


45 ^ 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ I have given my word of honor that I will never lend 
it. Much as I like to help my color to freedom, I cannot 
break my word. To-morrow I have to go into Delaware 
with my pass to nurse a lady.” 

“ You attend the sick, Mrs. Hudson ?” 

“Yes, I have a kind of call that way, Miss Virgie. 
Ever since I was a girl I pulled herbs and tried them on 
myself, and studied ’tendin’ on people, watchin’ their 
minds, that is so much of sickness, and how to wrap and 
rub them. My husband oysters down in the inlets. Here 
is his wagon.” 

“The Lord remember you in need, dear Mrs. Hud- 
son.” 

The old wagon, an open thing, to peddle oysters and 
fish, was driven across the town to the south, and soon 
was in the open country, going towards Virginia. A 
smell of salt bay seemed in the air ; the hawks’ nests in 
dead trees indicated the element that subsisted every- 
thing, and the trees in the fields were often lordly in 
size, though sand and small oak and pine woods were 
seldom out of sight. As they turned into a lane near a 
little roadside place of worship, a young white man rode 
by on horseback, and, seeing Virgie, reined in and shouted, 

“ Purty, purty, purty as peaches and cream ! Ole Vir- 
ginny blood is in them eyes, by the Ensign !” 

The colored man muttered, “Go ’long, Mr. Wise!” 

“By the Ensign now,” continued the man, who was 
young, but of a cadaverous countenance, “ if ’tis a Mary- 
land huzzy, she is marvellous. What’s the name, angel 
gal?” 

“ She’s a Miss Spence. I’m a takin’ her home yer,” 
the mulatto man interposed, hastily, and went in the gate, 
while the horseman, with a shout like one intoxicated, 
gallopped towards the north. 

“ I’m sorry he seen you, sho’ !” the conductor said ; 
“ that’s Henry A. Wise, the big lawyer from Accomac. 


virgie’s flight. 


459 

Maybe he’ll inquire at Snow Hill, where he’s goin’ to 
court.” 

“ What house is this, Mr. Hudson?” Virgie asked, 
seeing at the end of the short lane a thickset house and 
• porch, with small farm-buildings around it. 

“That’s ole Spring Hill, built by the first of the Mil- 
burns ; by the one that made the will leavin’ his hat and 
nothin’ else to he son. It’s got brick ends. I ’spect they 
had money when they come here, Virgie.” 

The quickened mettle of the girl noticed that he had 
ceased to call her “ Miss.” 

“Now,” said Hudson, “I’m goin’ to leave you here 
with my sister till I see about gittin’ a boat. If you is 
tracked to Snow Hill, it’ll be found you come out this 
way, now. The inlets run up along the coast yer past 
the Delaware line. I’m a goin’ to sail you past Snow 
Hill agin an’ double on ’em. Yes, Miss Virgie, I’ll git 
you away if it costs all I have got together.” 

An excited light seemed to be in his eyes. 

Virgie was put in a loft over the kitchen of the house, 
and left to her contemplations. The place was nearly 
dark, and she was jaded for want of sleep, the past night’s 
excitement having shaken her nervous system, and soon 
she began fo doze fitfully, and dream almost awake. 

She saw Meshach Milburn, who seemed to have be- 
come a little, old-faced child, reaching up to an older per- 
son, very like himself in features, and taking a steeple 
hat from his hand. This older child reached back, 
and took a similar hat from another, still older; and 
then the first two vanished, and two old men were giv- 
ing and receiving the hat. 

Then nothing was left but the hat alone, which was a 
huge object with fire belching from it, and by the flame a 
circle of wizards went round and round in dizzy glee, all 
wearing hats of similar form, but higher, higher, till they 
reached the sky and stars, and each was spouting flames. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


460 

Among these riotous wizards she recognized the feat 
uresof the tall kidnapper and of Judge Custis ; and Vesta, 
too, was there, and old Aunt Hominy, all giving a hasty 
look of shame or sorrow or severity at her, till she, fear- 
ing, yet fascinated, leaped into the circle, and danced' 
around and around with the rest, till her feet made a fiery 
path and her head was burning hot, and finally she lost 
her balance, and fell into the great hat, whose high walls, 
like mountains, surrounded her, and nothing could she 
see in the bottom of the old felt tile but a little grave, 
and peeping from it was the face of the murdered child 
the kidnapper had taken away. 

“ Come,” said a voice, and Virgie awoke, with fever in 
her temples and hot hands, to see the head of her con- 
ductor looking into the loft as if with red-hot eyeballs. 

She only knew that she was going again in the old 
wagon, and a boy was in it, and that after a certain 
time, she could not tell how long, she was helped to the 
ground at an old landing, where the road stopped, and 
was placed on board a sort of scow, which the breeze, 
laden with mosquitoes, was carrying into a broad, islet- 
sprinkled water. 

The man Hudson was sounding, and was watching the 
sail, while the boy steered, and Virgie was lying, sick and 
cold, in the middle of the skiff, covered with the man’s 
large coat. 

It seemed to her to be afternoon, and the ocean some- 
where near, as she heard low thunder, like breaking 
waves ; and once, when she rose, in a stupefied way, to 
look, there were familiar objects on both shores, and she 
thought it was the Old Town beach near Snow Hill inlet. 

A little later the man brought her oysters and some 
cold pork-rib, with corn-bread, to eat, and the shores 
grew closer, and finally seemed almost to meet, as the 
skiff, scraping the bottom, darted through a narrow strait. 

Then the stars were shining over her, and the waters 


virgie’s flight. 


461 

grew wide again, and, lying in a trance of flying lights 
and images, she thought she felt her lips kissed, and a 
voice say “ Darling !” 

Finally, she felt lifted up and carried, and, when she 
could realize the situation, she found herself lying on a 
pile of shingles at an old wharf, and the man, beside her, 
was weeping, as he watched the boat receding down a 
moonlit aisle of wave. 

“ My boy, my poor ole woman/’ she heard her con- 
ductor mutter, “I never can come back to you no mo’!” 

“ Why ?” spoke Virgie, hardly realizing what she said. 

“ Because — because — you did it !” the man exclaimed, 
with ardent eyes, seen through his streaming tears. 

“ Oh, tell me where I am !” Virgie said. “ Is it far to 
freedom now?” 

She looked at the sky, all agitated with clouds and 
stars moving across each other, and it seemed the near- 
est world of all. 

“ Is my father there ?” thought Virgie, “my dear white 
father ? Can he see me here, sick and lonely, and hate 
me ?” 

“ We’re at de Shingle landing ; yonder is St. Martin’s,” 
said the negro, cautiously ; “ there’s two roads nigh whar 
we air, goin’ to the North, dear Virgie ; one is the stage- 
road, and t’other is the shingle-trail through the Cypress 
Swamp. 

“Take the road that’s the safest to Freedom,” Virgie 
sighed. 

In a few moments, walking over the ground, they came 
to a place where the cart-trail crossed a sandy road, and 
went beyond it, along the edge of a small stream. The 
man walked a few steps up the better road undecidedly, 
and suddenly drew Virgie back into the bushes, but not 
quick enough to be unobserved by two men coming on 
in an old, rattling wagon. 

“ My skin !” cried the man driving, a youngish man, 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


462 

of sharp, but not unkindly eyes, “ thar’s a sniptious gal. 
Come out yer and show yourself!” 

Virgie felt the man’s eyes resting on her, but not with 
the coarse ardor of his companion, who wore a wide 
slouched hat and red shirt, and was bandaged around 
the head and throat, yet from his ghastly pale face, like 
death, on which some blood seemed to be smeared, and 
to stain the bandage at his neck, lay a coarse leer, and 
he kissed his mouth at her, and uttered : 

“ Ojlexuosa ! esquisita! It is dainty, Sorden !” 

“ Now ef we was a going t’other way, Van Dorn,” the 
driver said, “we could give them a lift. Boy, what are 
you out fur ? Where’s your passes ?” 

“ Yer they is. It’s my wife an’ me, gwyn to nurse a 
lady in Delaware.” 

“Let me see!” He puffed his cigar upon the paper, 
and exclaimed, “ Prissy Hudson ? why, my skin ! that’s 
my wife’s nurse. And that ain’t the same woman ! where 
did you get this pass ?” 

“ Go on, Sorden !” coughed the other man, “ I’m bleed- 
ing. Let me lie down.” 

His eyes had lost their wanton fire, and were hollow 
and glazing. The driver caught him in his arms, and 
uttered the kind words, 

“ I love him as I never loved A male !” 

“ Give me back the passes !” exclaimed the mulatto 
man, as the wagon started south. 

“ No,” shouted the driver, “ I shall keep them as evi- 
dence against Prissy Hudson for assisting a runaway !” 

“ Lost ! lost !” muttered the mulatto. “ Now, darling, 
the swamp’s our only road !” 

He seized her in his flight, and pulled her up the cart- 
track along the swampy branch. 

“ What have you done ?” cried Virgie. 

“Come! come!” answered the man. “Here is no 
place to talk.” 


virgie’s flight. 


463 

With fever making her strong, and heightening, yet 
clouding, her impressions, so that time seemed extinct, 
and fear itself absorbed in frenzy, the girl followed the 
man into the deep sand of the track, and scarcely noted 
the melancholy cypress-trees rising around them out of 
pools that sucked poison from the starlight, basking there 
beside the reptile. 

Flowers, with such rich tints that night scarcely dark- 
ened them, sent up their musky perfumes, and vines, in 
silent festoons, drooped from high tips of giant trees like 
Babel’s aspiring builders, turned back and stricken dumb. 
They fell all limp, and, hanging there in death, their beards 
still seemed to grow in the ghastly vitality of an immortal 
dream. 

The sounds of restless animation, intenser in the night, 
as if the moon were mistress here, and wakened every 
insect brain and tongue to industry, grew prodigious in 
the sick girl’s ears, and seemed to deaden every word her 
male companion had to say, and, like enormous pendu- 
lums of sound, the roaming crickets and amphibia swung 
to and fro their contradictions, like viragos doomed to 
wait for eternity, and each insist upon the last word to 
say : 

“You did!” “You didn’t!” “You did!” “You didn’t, 
you didn’t, you didn’t !” “ You did, you did !” 

Thus the eternal quarrel, begun before Hector and the 
Greeks were born, had raged in the Cypress Swamp, and 
increased in loudness every night, till on the flying slave 
girl’s ears it pealed like God and Satan disputing for her 
soul. « 

As this idea increased upon her fancy she heard the 
very words these warring powers hurled to and fro, as 
now the myriads of the angels cheered together, “ Halle- 
lujah ! Hallelujah !” and, like an army of spiders, assem- 
bled in the swamp, a deep refrain of “ Hell, hell, hell J” 
groaned back. 


464 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“Hallelujah!” “Hell!” “Hallelujah!” 

She found herself crying, as she stumbled on, “ Halle- 
lujah! hallelujah!” 

The swamp increased in depth and solemnity as they 
drew near the rushing sluices of the Pocomoke, and kept 
along them, the trail being now a mere ditch and chain 
of floating logs where no vehicle could pass, and the man 
himself seemed frightened as he led the way from trunk 
to float and puddle to corduroy, sometimes balancing 
himself on a revolving log, or again plunging nearly to 
his waist in vegetable muck ; but the light-footed girl be- 
hind had the footstep of a bird, and hopped as if from 
twig to twig, and seemed to slide where he would sink ; 
and the man often turned in terror, when he had fallen 
headlong from some treacherous perch, to see her slender 
feet, in crescent sandals, play in the moonlit jungle like 
hands upon a harp. 

He stared at her in wonder, but too wistfully. The 
cat-briers hung across the opening, and grape-vines, like 
cables of sunken ships, fell many a fathom through the 
crystal waves of night ; but the North Star seemed to find 
a way to peep through everything, and Virgie heard the 
words from Hudson, once, of — 

“Jess over this branch a bit we is in Delaware !” 

Then the crickets and tree-frogs* the bull-frogs and the 
whippoorwills, the owls and everything, seemed to drown 
his voice and halloo for hours, “ We is in Delaware ! we 
is, we is ! we is in Del-a-a-ware !” 

A little warming, kindly light at length began to blaze 
their trail along, as if some gentle predecessor, with a 
golden adze, had chipped the funereal trees and made 
them smile a welcome. Small fires were burning in the 
vegetable mould or surface brush, and the opacity of the 
forest yielded to the pretty flame which danced and al- 
most sang in a household crackle, like a young girl in love 
humming tunes as she kindles a fire. 


virgie’s flight. 


465 

The mighty swamp now grew distinct, yet more inac- 
cessible, as its inner edges seemed transparent in the line 
of fires, like curtains of lace against the midnight window- 
panes. The Virginia creeper, light as the flounces of a 
lady, went whirling upward, as if in a dance ; the fallen 
giant trees were rich in hanging moss ; laurel and jas- 
mine appeared beyond the bubbling surface of long, green 
morass, where life of some kind seemed to turn over 
comfortably in the rising warmth, like sleepers in bed. 

Suddenly the man took Virgie up and carried her 
through a stream of running water, brown with the tan- 
nin matter of the swamp. 

“ We is in Delaware,” he said, soon after, as they 
reached a camp of shingle sawyers, all deserted, and 
lighted by the fire, the golden chips strewn around, and 
the sawdust, like Indian meal, that suggested good, warm 
pone at Teackle Hall to Virgie. 

She put her feet, soaked with swamp water, at a burn- 
ing log to warm, and hardly saw a mocasson snake glide 
round the fire and stop, as if to dart at her, and glide 
away; for Virgie’s mind was attributing this kindly fire 
to the presence of Freedom. 

“ Oh, I should like to lie here and go to sleep,” she 
said, languidly ; “I am so tired.” 

The man Hudson, wringing wet with the journey’s dif- 
ficulties, threw his arms around her and drew her to his 
damp yet fiery breast. 

“We will sleep here, then,” he breathed into her lips; 
“ I love you !” 

The incoherence of everything yielded to these sudden 
words, and on the young maid’s startled nature came a 
reality she had not understood : her guide was drunken 
with passion. 

She struggled in his arms with all her might, but was 
as a switch in a maniac’s hands. 

“ I stole my ole woman’s pass fur you,” the infatuated 

30 


466 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


ruffian sighed ; “ you said you would love the man who 
got you one, Virgie. You is mine !” 

A suffocating sense and heat, more than animal nature, 
seemed to enclose them. The girl struggled free, her 
lithe figure exerted with all her dying strength to preserve 
her modesty. 

“ Hudson,” she cried, “ I will tell your wife ! God for- 
give you for insulting a poor, sick, helpless girl in this 
wild swamp !” 

“ My wife is dead to me, Virgie. You is the only wife 
I has now. Here we shall sleep and forgit my children 
and my little home that was enough fur me, gal, till your 
beauty come and tuk me from it.” 

“ Stop !” the girl called, with her face blanched even in 
her fever, though not with fear, as her white blood rose 
proudly. “ If you do not keep away, I will throw myself 
in that deep pool and drown. I would rather die than 
cheat your good wife as you have done.” 

“ Nothing is yer,” the negro said, “ but you, an’ me, an’ 
Love.’ I would not let you drown. You are too beauti- 
ful. We will get to the free states together and live for 
each other. Kiss me !” 

He darted upon her again and bent her fair head back 
by the fallen braids of her silky hair. 

The tall woods filled with majestic light ; something 
roared as if the winds had gone astray and were rushing 
towards them. 

“ Hark !” cried Virgie. “ God is coming to punish 
you.” 

As she spoke the ground beside them burst into flames 
and black smoke. The man’s arms relaxed ; he looked 
around him and exclaimed, 

“ It’s the underground fire. Run fur your life !” 

He led the way, running to the north, as they had been 
going. In a moment fire, like a golden wall, rose across 
their path. 


virgie’s flight. 


467 

They turned whence they had come, and the fire there 
was like a lake of lava, and over it the enormous trees 
seemed to warm their hands, and up the dry vines, like 
monkeys of flame, the forked spirits of the burning earth 
dodged and chased each other. 

“ Gal, I can’t leave you to perish,” the desperate man 
shouted ; “ you must love me or we’ll die together.” 

He threw his wet great-coat around her head, so that 
she could not breathe the smoke not spoil her beauty, 
and dashed into the fire ahead of them. 

* **#*.* * 

Virgie awoke, lying upon the ground, the stars still 
standing in the sky, but some streaks of light in the east 
betokening dawn. 

Her hands were full of soot, her skirts were burned, 
some smarting pains were in her legs and feet, but she 
could walk. 

“Where is that poor, deluded man ?” she thought. 

A groan came from the ground, and there lay some- 
thing nearly naked, burrowing his face in a pool of swamp 
water. 

“ Thank the Lord you are not dead,” the girl said, “ but 
have lived to repent and be a better man.” 

He rose up and looked at her with a face all blackened 
and raw and hideous to see. 

“ Merciful Lord !” exclaimed Virgie ; “ what ails you, 
pore man?” 

“ The Lord has punished me for my wickedness,” he 
groaned. “ Virgie, you must lead me now ; I am gone 
blind.” 


468 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


Chapter XXXIX. 
virgie’s flight ( continued ). 

“ Can you walk, Hudson ?” asked Virgie, when her hor- 
ror would permit. 

“Yes, child, I can walk, I reckon ; but both my eyes is 
burned out. Oh, my pore old wife : she could nurse me 
so well. I have lost her.” 

The girl comforted the sightless man, and led him on, 
indifferent to danger. He waded the deep places, where 
the water soothed his wounds and filled his blistered 
sockets with cool mud. 

“ Blessed is the pure in heart,” he murmured, as they 
reached some sandy ground and sank down. “ You, Vir- 
gie, can see God ; I never can.” 

The great Cypress Swamp of Delaware — counterpart 
of the Dismal Swamp in Virginia — the northern border 
of which they had now reached, had probably been once 
a great inlet or shallow bay in the encroaching sand-bar 
of the peninsula, and was filled with oysters and fish, 
which in time were imprisoned and became the manure 
of a cypress forest that soon started up when springs of 
water flowed under the sand and moistened the seed ; 
and for ages these forests had been growing, and had been 
prostrated, and had dropped their leaves and branches 
in the great inlet’s bed, until a deep ligneous mass of 
combustible stuff raised higher and higher the level of 
the swamp, and, dried with ages more of time than dried 
the mummies of the Pharaohs, it often opened tunnels to 
burrowing fire, which at some point of its course belched 
forth and lighted the hollow trees, and raged for weeks. 
Such a fire they had come through. 


virgie’s flight. 469 

Virgie, in the early daylight, came upon a small, swarthy 
boy, driving a little cart and ox. 

“ Are you a colored boy ?” Virgie asked. 

“ No,” answered the boy, proudly. “ I’m Indian-river 
Indian ; reckon I’m a little nigger.” 

“Take this poor man in and I will pay you. Where 
are you going ?” 

“ To Dagsborough landing, for salt.” 

“ Leave me at Dagsborough, at the old Clayton house,” 
spoke up the blind man ; “ it’s empty. I can die thar or 
git a doctor.” 

Before the people were up they entered a little hamlet, 
on that stage road from which they had made the night’s 
detour, and saw a few small houses and a little shingle- 
boarded church near by among the woods, and one large 
house of a deserted appearance was at the town’s extrem- 
ity. The man said, “This is John M. Clayton’s birth- 
place : my wife used to work yer.” 

“ Virgie !” exclaimed a familiar voice. 

The girl turned, her ears still ringing with the echoes 
of the swamp, and saw a face she knew, and ran to the 
breast beneath it, crying, 

“ Samson Hat ! Oh, friend, love me like my mother. 
I am very ill.” 

“ Pore, darlin’ child,” Samson said ; “ no love will I ever 
bodder you wid agin but a father’s. Why air you so fur 
from home?” 

“ I’m sold, Samson : I’m trying to get free. The kid- 
nappers is after me. Oh, save me !” 

“ I’ve jist got away from ’em, Virgie. The ole woman, 
Patty Cannon, set me free. I promised her I would kid- 
nap somebody younger dan ole Samson. Bless de Lord ! 
I come dis way !” 

He led her into the oak-trees of the old church grove, 
where English worship had been celebrated just a hun- 
dred years ; and she gave him money to buy medicine 


470 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


and get a doctor for the blind man, and to purchase her 
a shawl at the store. Then Virgie sank into a fevered 
sleep under the old oak-trees, and, when she knew more, 
was gliding in a boat that Samson was sailing down a 
broad piece of water, and her head was in his lap. 

“You air pure as an angel yit, my little creatur,” 
Samson said; “and now I’m a-takin’ you down the In- 
dian River into Rehoboth Bay; and arter dark I’ll git 
you up the beach to Cape Hinlopen, and maybe I kin 
buy you a passage on some of dem stone boats dat’s 
buildin’ de new breakwater dar, and dat goes back to de 
Norf.” 

“ Oh, Samson, if I could love any man it would be you,” 
Virgie said ; “ but I cannot love any now except my dear 
white father. Who is he ?” 

“ De Lord, I reckon, has got yo’ pedigree, Virgie.” 

“ Am I dying, Samson ?” asked the girl, wistfully, with 
her brilliant eyes full of fever. “ Oh, friend, let me die so 
good that Miss Vesty and my father can come and kiss me !” 

“ Tell me about Princess Anne an’ my dear old Mars- 
ter Meshach Milburn, dat I’se leff so long, Virgie !” the 
old pugilist said, wiping his eyes of tears. 

She began to try to remember, but faces and events 
ran into each other, and she felt aware that her mind 
was wandering, but could not bring it back ; and so the 
boat, sailing in sight of the ocean and the stately ships 
there, grounded after noon almost within sound of the surf. 

Sheltered in a piece of woods for some hours, Virgie 
found herself, at dark, carried in old Samson’s arms up a 
beach of the sea where the sand was yielding and seldom 
firm, except at the very edge of the surf, which rolled 
ominously and at times became a roar, and often swept 
to the low, sedgy bank. Lightning played across the 
black sea, lifting it up, as it seemed, and showing vessels 
making either out or in, and finally thunder burst upon 
the gathering confusion, and Samson said : 


virgie’s flight. 


471 


“ Dar’s a gun in dat thunder !” 

The next flash of lightning showed a vessel close to the 
shore, coming rapidly in on the southeaster, and her gun 
was fired again, and feeble hailing was heard ; but the 
storm now broke all at once, and a wave threw Samson 
to the ground and nearly carried Virgie back with it to 
the boiling sea ; but the faithful old man fought for her, 
and she ran at his side, uttering no complaint, till once, 
as they stopped to get breath, and the heavenly fire drew 
into sight every foot, as it seemed, of that vast ocean, 
cannonading it also with majestic artillery, the girl sighed, 

“ Freedom is beautiful !” 

“ Oh, Virgie,” Samson answered, covering her with his 
own coat, “ if I could buy you free, pore chile, I’d a-mos’ 
go into slavery to save you from dis night.” 

“ I can die in there,” Virgie said, pointing to the waves ; 
“they must not catch me.” 

A wail came out of the storm, so close before that it 
hushed them both, and the lightning lifted upon their 
eyes a stranding vessel, so close, it seemed, that they 
could touch it, and she was full of people, hallooing, but 
not in any intelligible tongue. 

As the black night fell upon this magic-lantern sketch 
they heard a crash of wave and wood, and falling spars 
and awful shrieks, and, when the next vivid flash of light- 
ning came, nothing was visible but floating substance, and 
spluttering cries came out of the bosom of the sea, and a 
black man, flung, as if out of a cannon, upon a wave 
that drenched these wanderers, struck the ground at their 
feet, and looked into Samson’s eyes as the convulsion of 
death seized his chest and feet. 

Before they could speak to each other, the beach was 
full of similar corpses, a moment before alive as them- 
selves, and every one was naked and black. 

“ It’s a slave-ship, foundered yer,” cried Samson. 

He caught at a yawl-boat driving past him, in the many 


472 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


things that drifted around their feet, and Virgie saw paint- 
ed upon its bow the word “Ida.” 

“ Samson,” she said, feeling all the influences of Prin- 
cess Anne again, and forgetting her own misery, “ it’s 
Mrs. Dennis’s husband come home and shipwrecked.” 

******* 

When Virgie next remembered, she was on a vast hill 
of sand, near a lighthouse that was built upon it, and 
flashed its lenses sleepily upon a sullen break of day, the 
mutual lights showing the tops of trees rising out of the 
sand, where a forest had been buried alive, like little twigs 
in amber. 

Almost naked with fighting the storm, Samson Hat 
slept at her side, peaceful as hale age and virtue could 
enjoy the balm of oblivion in life. 

“ Happy are the black,” thought the sick girl, " that 
take no thought on things this white blood in me makes 
so big: on freedom and my father. Father, do love me 
before I die !” 

She knelt on the great sand hillock by Cape Henlopen 
and prayed till she, too, lost her knowledge of self, and 
was sleeping again at Samson’s side. She dreamed of 
innumerable angels flying all around her, and yet their 
voices were so harsh they awoke her at last, and still 
these seraphs were flying in the day. She saw their 
wings, and moved the old man at her side to say, 

“ Samson, why cannot these angels sing?” 

The old man looked up and faintly smiled : 

“ Poor Virgie, dey is wild-fowls, all bewildered by dat 
storm : geese and swans. Dey can’t sing like angels.” 

“ Yes,” said the girl ; “ something sings, I know. What 
is it? : ’ 

“Jesus, maybe,” the negro answered, looking at her, his 
eyes full of tears. 

******* 

The great Breakwater, which required forty years and 


virgie’s flight. 


473 

nearly a million tons of stone to build it, was then just coni' 
mencing, and where it was to be, within the shallow bight 
of Henlopen, they saw the wrecks of many vessels, some 
sunken, some shattered in collision, some stranded in the 
marsh, proving the needs of commerce for such a work, 
and also the fury of the storm that had so innocently van- 
ished, like a sleeping tiger after his bloody meal. 

In the gentle sunshine floated the American flag upon 
several vessels there — the flag that first kissed the breeze 
upon that spot in the year 1776, when Esek Hopkins 
raised over the Alfred the dyes of the peach and cream 
in the centre of his little squadron. And there, along 
the low bluff of the Kill, still lay the shingle-boarded 
town of Lewes, in the torpor of nearly two hundred 
years, or since the Dutch De Vries had settled it in 
1631. Lord Delaware, Argali, and the Swede, Penn, 
Blackbeard, Paul Jones, Lord Rodney, a thousand heroes, 
had known it well ; the pilots, like sea-gulls, had their 
nests there ; the Marylanders had invaded it, the Tories 
had seized it, pirates had been suckled there ; and now 
the courts and lawyers had forsaken it, to go inland to 
Georgetown. 

“ Virgie,” said Samson, “ I’ll try to buy some of de 
stone-boat captains to carry you to Phildelfy.” 

He waded the Kill, carrying her, and left her in an 
old Presbyterian church at the skirt of Lewes, and pro- 
cured medicine for her, and then labored in vain nearly 
all day to get her passage to a free state. The reply was 
invariable : “ Can’t take the risk of the whippin’-post and 
pillory for no nigger. Can’t lose a long job like bringin’ 
stone to the Breakwater to save one nigger.” 

At the hotel a colored man beckoned Samson aside— 
a fine-looking man, of a gingerbread color — and they went 
into the little old disused court-house, in the middle of a 
street, where there was a fire. 

“ Brother,” said the stranger, “I see by your actions 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


474 

that you’re trying to git a passage North. Is it fur your- 
self?” 

“ No,” Samson said, taking an inventory of the other’s 
fine chest and strength, and mentally wishing to have a 
chance at him ; “ I’m a free man, and kin go anywhere ; 
but I have a friend.” 

“Why, old man,” spoke the other, frankly, “I’m the 
agent of our society at this pint.” 

“What is it?” asked Samson, warily. 

“The Protection Society. They educated me right 
yer. I went to school with white boys. Now, where is 
your friend ?” 

“ What kin you do fur her ?” asked Samson. 

“ It’s a gal, is it? Why, I can just put her in my bug- 
gy, made and provided for the purpose, and drive her to 
the Quaker settlement.” 

“ Where’s that ?” 

“ Camden— only thirty miles off. I’ve got free passes 
all made out. Give yourself, brother, no more concern.” 

Samson looked at the handsome person long and well. 
The man stood the gaze modestly. 

“ Oh, if I had some knowledge !” spoke Samson ; “ I 
might as well be a shave if I know nothin’. I can’t read. 
I wish I could read your heart !” 

“ I wish you could,” said the man ; “ then you would 
trust me.” 

“ What is your name ?” 

“ Samuel Ogg.” 

“I want you to hold up your hand and swear, Sam 
Ogg, that you will never harm the pore chile I bring you. 
Say, ‘ Lord, let my body rot alive, an’ no man pity me, if 
I don’t act right by her.’ ” 

“ It’s a severe oath,” said the stranger, “ but I see your 
kind interest in the lady. Indeed, I’m only doing my 
duty.” 

He repeated the words, however, and Samson added, 


virgie’s flight. 


475 

“God deal with you, Sam Ogg, as you keep dat oath. 
Now come with me !” 

The girl was found asleep, but delirious, her large eyes, 
in which the blue and brown tints met in a kind of lake 
color, being wide open, and almost lost in their long lash- 
es, while flood and fire, sun and frost, had beaten upon 
the slender encasement of her gentle life, that still kept 
time like some Parian clock saved from a conflagration, 
in whose crystal pane the golden pendulum still moves, 
though the hands point astray in the mutilated face. 

Her teeth were shown through the loving lips she part- 
ed in her stormy dreams, like waves tossing the alabaster 
sails of the nautilus, or like some ear of Indian corn ex- 
posed in the gale that blows across the tasselled field. 

Her raiment, partly torn from her, showed her supple 
figure and neck, and, beneath her mass of silky hair, 
her white arm, like an ivory serpent, sustained her head, 
her handsome feet being fine and high-bred, like the soul 
that bounded in her maiden ambition. 

There had been days when such as she called Antony 
away from his wife, and Gesar from his classical selfish- 
ness ; when on many an Eastern throne such beauty as 
this stirred to murmurous glory armies beyond compute, 
and clashed the cymbals of prodigious conquests. She 
lay upon the altar-cushions of the church, like young 
Isaac upon his father’s altar, and where the mourners 
knelt to pray for God’s reconcilement, the cruelty of 
their law flashed over her like Abraham’s superstitious 
knife. 

Priceless was this young creature, in noble hands, as 
wife or daughter, human food or fair divinity, and all the 
precious mysteries of woman awake in her to love and 
conjugality, like song and seed in the spring bird ; yet a 
hard, steely prejudice had shut her out from every insti- 
tution and equality, let every crime be perpetrated upon 
her, made the scent of freedom in her nostrils worse than 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


476 

the incentive of the thief, and has outlasted her half a 
century, and is self-righteous and inflexible yet. 

In that old churchyard that enclosed her slept revo- 
lutionary officers, who helped to gain freedom : they might 
be willing to rise with her, not to be buried in the same 
enclosure. 

How small is religion, how false democracy, how far off 
are the judgments of heaven ! There stood over the pul- 
pit an inscription, itself presumptuous with aristocracy, 
saying, “ The dead in Christ shall rise first as if those 
truly dead in the humility of Christ would not prefer to 
rise last ! 

Samson watched his new friend narrowly, whose coun- 
tenance was profoundly piteous, and his teeth and lip 
made a “Tut-tut!” Satisfied with the man, Samson 
knelt by Virgie and kissed her once. 

“ Pore rose of slavery,” said Samson, “ forgive me dat 
I courted you like a gal, instead of like an angel. I am 
old, and ashamed of myself. Dear, draggled flower, we 
may never meet agin. May the Lord, if dis is his holy 
temple, save you pure and find you a home, Virgie. Good- 
bye!” 

“Come,” said the man, as Samson sat bowed and 
weeping, “the buggy is ready; I’ll wrap you warm, 
Miss.” 

“Freedom!” spoke the girl, awakening ; “oh, I must 
find it.” 

******* 

The next that Virgie knew, she was in a cabin loft, and 
voices were heard speaking in a room below. 

“See me!” said one ; “ we sell you, dat’s sho’ ! See 
me now ! You make de best of it. Sam Ogg yer, we 
sold twenty-two times. Sam will be sold wid you and 
teach yo’ de Murrell game.” 

“Politely, gentlemen,” said a feminine voice; “I don’t 
know that I have the nerve for it. My occupation has 


virgie’s flight. 


477 

been marrying them. It is true that the hue-and-cry has 
made that branch dull, but I had great talent for it.” 

“ Kidnapping,” said a third voice, “ is running low. It 
surrounds the whole slave belt from Illinois to Delaware. 
The laws of Illinois were made in our interests till Gov- 
ernor Harrison, whose free man was kidnapped, raised 
an excitement out there six years ago. Newt Wright, 
Joe O’Neal, and Abe Thomas were the smartest kidnap- 
pers along the Kentucky line. But Joe Johnson, who is 
getting ready to go south, will be the last man of enter- 
prise in the business. John A. Murrell’s idea is to divide 
fair with black men, sell and steal them back, and I think 
it is sagacious. It’s safer, any way, than Patty Cannon’s 
other plan.” 

“What is that, Mr. Ogg?” said the feminine-voiced 
negro. 

“ Making away with the negro-traders, they say.” 

“ See me ! see me !” exclaimed the first voice. “ Dey’ll 
hang her some day fur dat.” 

“Now,” resumed Mr. Ogg, “a man of intelligence 
like you and me, Mr. Ransom — pardon, sir, does your 
shackle incommode you ? I’ll stuff it with some wool — ” 

“ Politely, Mr. Ogg ; I’m ironed rather too tight.” 

“ I say, Mr. Ransom, you and I can always play the 
average slaveholder for a fool. Why, I hardly get into 
any family before I make love to some member of it, and 
if I don’t vamose with a black wench, it’s with her mis- 
tress.” 

“ Ah, Mr. Ogg, they are perfectly fiendish in resenting 
that!” 

“Of course, but there’s a grand tit-for-tat going through 
all nature. Why, sir, the pleasures of the far South, to a 
man of art and enterprise like you, far exceed this poor, 
plain region. Take the roof off slavery and the blacks 
have rather the best of it ; the whites would think so if 
they could see what is going on.” 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


478 

“ Politely, Mr. Ogg; will not the entire institution some 
day blow itself out, like one of their Western steamboats ?” 

“No doubt of it, Mr. Ransom. When we have dis- 
posed of you, and you can see the country for yourself, ob- 
serve how sensitive slaveholding is! A thousand anxie- 
ties lie in it. They believe in insurrections, rapes, and 
incendiaries. A perfect sleep they hardly know, but go 
prowling around night and day, driven by their suspi- 
cions. It makes them warlike, yet unhappy, and the 
slaves eat the ground poor. Besides, they have terrible 
enemies in the negro-traders, whom they look down on 
socially, and really drive them into sympathy with the 
negroes. Mr. Murrell, for instance, has a grand plan for 
a slave insurrection. He says white society is all against 
him, and he’ll get even with it.” 

“ See me, see me !” hoarsely chimed in another voice. 
“ Slavery is bad scared, sho’ ! Joe Leonard Smith, Cath- 
olic, over on de western sho’, has jess set twelve niggers 
free. Governor Charley Ridgely has set two hundred 
and fifty free. John Randolph, dey say, is gwyn to set 
more dan three hundred free. Dar’s fifty abolition socie- 
ties in Nawf Carolina, eleven in Maryland, eight in ole 
Virgin ny, two in Delaware. Ho, ho ! dey set ’em free 
and we’ll steal ’em back ! Ole Derrick Molleston will 
never be out of pork an’ money !” 

“Politely, gentlemen,” said the individual with the 
shackle. “ Have you heard of the incendiary proclama- 
tion issued in Boston by David Walker, telling all slaves 
that it is their religious duty to rise ?” 

“Yes, and rise they will, but to what end? It will be 
a big scare, but no war. The next thing they will stop 
reading among all slaves, prevent emancipation by law, 
and watch the colored meeting-houses. The fire will be 
buried under the amount of the fuel, yet all be there.” * 

* The Nat Turner insurrection in Virginia occurred a year or 
thereabout later than this time. 


virgie’s flight. 


479 


“ Mr. Ogg, your experience is remarkable. And you 
have been sold and run away in nearly every slave state ? 
Politely, sir, are they not kidnapping white men, too ? 
Who is this Morgan that was stolen last year in the State 
of New York ?” 

“ Oh, that’s a renegade Free Mason, Mr. Ransom. As 
much fuss is made over him as if we did not steal a hun- 
dred free people every day. It only shows that kidnap- 
ping of all sorts is getting to be unpopular. If a new 
political party can be made on stealing one white Mor- 
gan, don’t you think another party will some day rise on 
stealing several millions of black Morgans ?” 

“ See me ! see me !” exclaimed the hoarse voice, sud- 
denly. 

“ Escaping, are you ?” cried the second voice. 

“Politely, gentlemen, politely!” was heard from the 
third voice, some distance off in the dark, and then chas- 
ing footsteps followed, and Virgie arose and peeped below. 

A fire was burning in a clay chimney beside a table, 
on which were meat and liquor. The girl swung herself 
out of the loft to the ground-floor, and, seizing the meat 
and bread, rushed noiselessly into the night. 

She hardly knew what she was doing until she had 
crossed a bridge and come to the edge of a small town, 
around which she took a road to the right that led into 
another country road, and this she followed a mile or 
more, till she saw a small brick house, by a stile and pole- 
well, in the edge of woods. 

The light from a little dormer-window in the garret 
beamed so brightly that it charmed Virgie’s soul with the 
fascination of warmth and home, and, without thinking, 
she crossed the stile, bathed her hot temples at the well, 
and walked into the kitchen before the fire. 

“Freedom!” said Virgie, wanderingly ; “have I come 
to it ?” She fell upon the rag carpet before the fire, say- 
ing, “ Father, dear father,” and did not move. 


480 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“Well,” spoke a man of large paunch and black 
snake’s eyes, sitting there, “ it’s not often people in search 
of freedom walk into Devil Jim Clark’s !” 

“ She is white,” exclaimed a woman, looking compas- 
sionately upon the stranger, “and she is dying.” 

“ No,” retorted the man, “ she is too pretty to be white. 
This is the bright wench Sam Ogg was seen with. She 
belongs to Allan McLane, and there’s a reward of five 
hundred dollars for her, but she’ll bring two thousand in 
New Orleans for a mistress.” 

“ Hush !” said the woman ; “you may bring a judgment 
upon your daughters.” 

“Joe Johnson is about to sail,” remarked Devil Jim 
Clark; “he shall take her with him.” 

The girl had heard that name through the thick cham- 
bers of oblivion. She rose and shrieked, and rushed 
into the woman’s arms : 

“ Save me, mother, save me from that man !” 

The woman’s heart was pierced by the cry, and she 
folded Virgie to her breast and kissed her, saying: 

“ She shall sleep in our daughter’s bed and rest her 
poor feet this night — our daughter, James, that we bur- 
ied.” 

The man’s mouth puckered a little ; he looked uneasy, 
and drew his handkerchief to his eyes. 

“ You’re all agin me ! you’re all agin me !” he bellowed, 
and rushed from the room. 

******* 

The wife of Devil Jim Clark was a pious Methodist, 
and, with her rich-eyed daughter, spent the next day at 
Virgie’s bedside, hearing her broken mutterings for father- 
ly love and Vesta’s cherished remembrance. 

“Your father is out for mischief,” Mrs. Clark said. 
“Jump on your saddle-horse, my daughter, and ride to 
the Widow Brinkley’s, just over the Camden line. Tell 
her to send for this girl.” 


virgie’s flight. 


481 


" Mamma, they say she’s an abolitionist.” 

“ That’s what I send you for. It’s a race between you 
and your father. Be with me or with him !” 

The girl tied on her hood, took her riding- whip, and 
departed. 

In an hour she returned with a tidy black woman, whom 
Mrs. Clark took into Virgie’s chamber. 

“ My heart bleeds for this poor girl,” the hostess said. 
M They say your son spirits negroes North. Mr. Clark 
says so. I do not ask you if it is true, but, as one moth- 
er to another, I give you this girl. She is too white to be 
sold. She looks like a dead child of mine.” 

“ Bill is not due home till sunset. If she is alive by 
that time, he has just time to drive her to Mr. Zeke Hunn’s 
vessel at the mouth of the creek, which lies there every 
trip one hour — ” 

“ To let runaways come aboard ?” 

“ I have never been accused of helping them, Mrs. 
Clark.” 

The trader’s wife slipped a bank-bill into the colored 
woman’s hand. 

“ Lend to the Lord !” she said. “ I depend upon you 
to save us the sin of selling this girl.” 

*###*## 

There came to the little black house that lurked by the 
woods two riding-horses, and stopped at the stile. 

“Wait here!” said the voice of Devil Jim Clark. 
“Will you take her if she is still delirious?” 

“Bingavast! Why not? I’m delirious myself, Jim, 
fur it’s my wedding-night. I’ll rest her at Punch Hall.” 

The herculean ruffian coolly proceeded to prepare some 
saddle-ropes to tie his victim before him on his horse. He 
was interrupted by a woman : 

“Come and see your work, Joe Johnson!” 

Following up the short cupboard stairs, the kidnapper 
was pointed to an object on the bed, with peaked face 
3i 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


482 

and sharpened feet, as it lay white as lime, with eyelashes 
folded and the arms drawn to its sides. 

“Take her to Patty Cannon now,” said Mrs. Clark, 
“ who is only fit for dead company.” 

“ The dell dead and undocked ?” the ruffian exclaimed, 
slightly shrinking from the body ; “ maybe she’s coun- 
terfeited the cranke. I’ll search her cly. But, hark !” 

A wagon and hoofs were heard. 

“Joe,” whispered the woman’s husband, “ you’re only 
four mile from Dover. Maybe it’s warrants for both of 
us ?” 

“ Hike, then !” hissed the pallid murderer ; “ the world’s 
agin me,” and he slipped away with his companion. 

******* 

“Now, Bill Brinkley,” the wife of Devil Jim whispered, 
as a tall, ingenuous-looking colored boy came in the room, 
“you are just in time. She has had laudanum enough 
to keep her still ; my daughter powdered her ; let me kiss 
her once before she goes.” 

As the woman departed, the black boy, looking around 
him, muttered : 

“ Whar is dat loft ? I’ve hearn about it.” 

Some movements overhead in the low dwelling directed 
his attention to a small trap-door, and, standing on a stool, 
he unbolted it and pushed it upwards, whispering, 

“ Any passengers for Philadelfy ? De gangplank’s 
bein’ pulled in !” 

First a woolly head, then another, and next two pairs 
of legs appeared above. 

“ Take hold yer and carry de sick woman to de dear- 
born,” the boy said, not a particle disturbed, as two 
frightened blacks dropped from the loft, with handcuffs 
upon them. 

******* 

In the clear evening a wagon sped along towards the 
east, through the saffron marshes, tramping down the 


virgie’s FLIGHT. 483 

stickweed and ironweed and the golden rod, and, while 
the people in it cowered close, the negro driver sang, as 
carelessly as if he was the lord of the country : 

“ De people of Tuckyhoe 
Dey is so lazy an’ loose, 

Dey sows no buttons upon deir clothes, 

And goes widout deir use ; 

So nature she gib dem buttons, 

To grow right outen deir hides, 

Dat dey may take life easy, 

And buy no buttons besides. 

“ But de people of Tuckyhoe 
Refuse to button deir warts, 

Unless dey’s paid a salary 
For practisin’ of sech arts ; 

Like de militia sogers, 

Dat runs to buttons an’ pay, 

De folks is truly shitless, 

On Tuckyhoe side of de bay.” 

A sail was seen in the starlight, rising out of the 
marshes at an old landing in the last elbow of Jones’s 
Creek, and hardly had the fugitives been put on board 
when the anchor was weighed and the packet stood out 
for the broad Delaware, her captain a negro, her owner a 
Quaker. 

The girl was awakened by the cold air of the bay strik- 
ing her face. 

“ Freedom !” she murmured ; “it must be this. Oh, I 
am faint for father’s arms to take me.” 

*##**#'# 

Was this Teackle Hall that Virgie looked upon — a 
square, bright room, and her bed beside a window, and 
below her stretching streets of cobblestone and brick, 
and roofs of houses, to green marshes filled with cows, 
and a river that seemed blue as heaven, which sipped it 
from above like a boy drinking head downward in a spring? 
How beautiful ! It must be freedom, Virgie thought, but 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


484 

why was she so cold? Her eyes, looking around the 
room, fell upon a lady in a cap, reading a tract to a large, 
shaven, square-jawed man, and this woman was of a silver 
kind of beauty, as if her mind had overflowed into her 
heart, and, not affecting it, had made her face of argent 
and lily, milk and sheen. 

“ What sayeth Brother Elias, Lucretia ?” 

“ He sayeth, Thomas : ‘ This noble testimony, of re- 
fusing to partake of the spoils of oppression, lies with the 
dearly beloved young people of this day. We can look 
for but little from the aged, who have been accustomed to 
these things, like second nature. Without justice there 
can be no virtue. Oh, justice, justice, how art thou abused 
everywhere ! Men make justice, like a nose of wax, to 
satisfy their desires. If the soul is possessed of love, 
there is quietness.’ ” 

“Yes,” said the girl, from the bed, thinking aloud ; 
“ love is quietness. Will father come !” 

She dreamed and heard and looked forth again upon 
the hill descending to the river, the stately sails, the far- 
ther shore, so like her native region, and asked with her 
eyes what land they might be in. 

“ Wilmington,” said the beautiful woman. “ This is the 
house of Thomas Garrett, the friend of slaves. When 
you can be moved, it shall be to the green hills of the 
Brandywine, where all are free.” 

“Hills? What are they?” mused Virgie, looking at 
her wasted hand. “ Must I climb any more ? Must I 
wade the swamps again ? I know I have a father some- 
where.” 

She dreamed and wept unconsciously, and told of many 
things at Teackle Hall, being, indeed, a little child again, 
playing with her little mistress, Vesta. The stars stood 
in the sky right over her pillow, and she talked to them, 
and some she seemed to know, as little Vince, or little 
.Roxy, or Master Willy Tilghman, all playmates of her 


virgie’s flight. 


485 

childhood ; but ever and anon these vanished, and the 
young Quaker woman was reading again from the ser- 
mons of Elias Hicks, and the words were : “ Love is quiet- 
ness /’ “ Light only can qualify the soul “ If I go not 
away, the Comforter will not come unto you.” 

“ What Comforter ?” sighed Virgie, and there seemed 
a great blank, and then she heard a scream — was it she 
that screamed so? — and she was trying with all her might 
to get somewhere, and was fainting in the labor, but try- 
ing again and again, and then a calmness that was like 
gentle awe, strange because so painless, spread into her 
nature, and she only listened. 

“ My daughter,” said a voice, “ my own child ! Call 
me ‘ father/ and say I am forgiven.” 

“ Father ! forgiven !” she murmured, and felt a warm 
face, that yet could not warm her own, shedding tears and 
kissing her, and close to it her arms were thrown tight, 
as if she never could let go, and everything was music, 
but wonderful. 

She feared she must fall if she did not hold to him. 
Who was it that called her “ daughter ” ? Why came 
those cold stars so close, as if to spy upon him ? 

Oh, holy purity, that held so fast and did not know, but 
trusted nature’s quivering embrace ! She wrestled with 
something, like a rock of ice, to move her eyes and see, or 
ere she was dashed down forever, the eyes that gushed 
for her. They were her master’s. 

“ Master,” she said, “ whose am I ?” 

“ Mine before God. Pure to my heart as your white 
sister, Vesta! White as young love, in fondness and 
trust forever !” 

“ And mother ?” gurgled the girl’s low notes ; “ where 
is she?” 

“Yonder,” said the Judge, “in Heaven, that will judge 
me, whither she winged in bearing thee to me !” 

A happy light came over Virgie’s face. She kissed 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


486 

hei father twice, as if the second kiss was meant for her 
happier sister, and, raising her arms towards the sky he 
pointed to, whispered, “ Freedom !” and died upon his 
breast. 


Chapter XL. 

HULDA BELEAGUERED. 

Owen Daw brought the news of the repulse from Cow- 
gill House and the wounding of Captain Van Dorn. 

“Where is the little tacker, Levin?” asked Patty Can- 
non, furiously. 

“ Arrested, I ’spect,” cried O’Day, boldly ; “ Van Dorn’s 
hit in the throat.” 

“ He’ll not talk much, then,” muttered the woman ; 
“his time had to come. Where will I find another lover 
at my age ? Why, honey,” she chuckled to herself, in a 
looking-glass, “ that son of his’n may come back. He’s 
took a shine to Huldy : why not to me ?” 

At the idea another hideous thought came to her mind : 
to settle Hulda’s fate in her young lover’s absence, and 
monopolize the corrupting power over Levin Dennis, if 
he ever lived to see Johnson’s Cross-roads again. 

As individual fugitives returned, confirming the deci- 
sive repulse of the band, Patty Cannon’s face grew dark, 
and her oaths low and deep; Cyrus James heard her 
say : 

“If I could only hang some one for this! Joe John- 
son’s the white-livered sneak that would not go. I’ve 
hanged a better son-in-law.” 

“ Aunt Patty, I love your grandchild, Huldy,” Cy James 
ventured to say. “The Captain’s wounded and Joe’s go- 
ing away to Floridy. Maybe I kin git you up another 
band.” 

Without an instant’s consideration of this ambitious 


HULDA BELEAGUERED. 


487 

proposition, Mrs. Cannon threw Cy James, by main 
strength, through the window of her bar, into her kitchen, 
and he bawled like a baby, yet came out of his grief mut- 
tering, “ Ploughin’, ploughin’ ! I’ll make her into batter 
and fry her yet.” 

With this reflection Mr. James hid himself for the re- 
mainder of the afternoon in some secluded part of the 
Hotel Johnson. 

Mrs. Cannon, however, had instantly resumed her mon- 
ologue on business. 

“ They all think to give the old woman the go-by : a 
sick man’s no good, and there’s that wife of Van Dorn’s 
hopin’ to git him yit. By God ! she sha’n’t have him in 
his shroud. No ; I’ll recruit from young material. Ruin 
’em when they’s boys, and, while you kin pet ’em, they’ll 
do your work ! I have one nigger in the garret Joe wants 
to burn : he’s my nigger, and I’ll let him loose to bring 
me more niggers. Money is what I need to put on a bold 
front: Huldy must fetch it!” 

With this resolution Patty Cannon mounted the stairs 
to a room on the second floor, and, without knocking, 
pushed her way in. 

A man of a voluptuous form and face, like one overfed, 
yet on the best, and with stiff, military shoulders, and of 
colors warm in tint, yet cold in expression, blue eyes, and 
rich, wine-lined cheeks and lips, that still seemed hard 
and self-indulged, spoke up at once : 

“Always knock, Patty! it’s more conservative. My 
way in life is to reach my point, but respect all the forms. 
What do you want ?” 

“When do you leave for Baltimore, Cunnil McLane?” 

“ As soon as Joe returns with my dear sister’s proper- 
ty : to-morrow, I hope.” 

“ You can take Huldy Bruington if you pay my price 
for her : two thousand dollars down. If you won’t give 
it, she shall be married to some young kidnapper, who 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


488 

will fetch twice that pile for her in niggers. They’ll all 
fight their weight in black wildcats to git her.” 

“Very, very abrupt proposition, Patty; not conserva- 
tive at all. What’s the matter with you, dame, to-day. 
Van Dorn not lucky, heigh ?” 

He gave her a vitreous smile and watched her over 
his round paunch, on which a crystal watch-seal hung, 
like a more human eye than his own. Her color began 
to rise. 

“I’m mad,” said Patty Cannon; “don’t worry me; 
don’t Jew me ! Do you mind ? Yes, Van Dorn has been 
whipped — by niggers, too. Will you pay my price or not ?” 

“Tut, tut, good woman! What can I want with a 
white girl. It wouldn’t look conservative at all in Balti- 
more.” 

Patty Cannon stamped her foot. 

“ Don’t rouse me with any of your hypocritical cant, 
Cunnil McLane ! What have you been teachin’ that 
child to read an’ write fur — out of your Bible, too ? What 
do you bring her presents fur, and hang around us when 
we know you despise us all, except fur the black folks we 
can sell you cheap*? Haven’t I been sold to men like 
you time and again before I was a woman, and don’t I 
know the sneaking pains that old men take to look be- 
nevolent when youth an’ beauty is fur sale ; and how they 
pet it to keep it pure fur their own selfish enjoyment? 
God knows I do !” 

“ Patty, you shock me !” the rubicund gentleman ob- 
served. “ I have always found you conservative before. 
Now, go and send sweet Hulda here, and, for Heaven’s 
sake, Patty, don’t reveal this bargain to her.” 

“ Is it a bargain, Cunnil ?” 

“ It is, if she can be made willing to it.” 

“That she shall, or make her bed in the forest, where 
good looks are not safe around yer.” 

Hulda was found at a window, looking out upon her 


hulda Beleaguered. 


489 

former home, and at a ploughman who had nearly com- 
pleted the furrows in a large field, sparing only some low 
places piled with brush, over one of which some buzzards 
circled, lofty, yet intent as anglers watching their tackle. 
Hard as that home had been to Hulda, she regretted 
leaving it for this men’s tavern, where her grandmother’s 
saucy temperament found so many incentives to bravado, 
and her caution, that had to be exercised in Delaware, 
was quite unnecessary on the Maryland side of the. 
line. 

At the little hip-roofed white cottage Hulda had felt a 
sense of privacy pleasing to her growing life, and her 
ability to read often charmed Patty Cannon to a stillness 
that was like the hyena’s sleep, and even made her ac- 
quiescent and cordial. 

But where she met men alone, unmodified by modest 
women’s example, the bold tendency of Patty was to out- 
do men, and lead them on to audacities they would have 
feared to follow in but for her courage and policy ; for 
she could coax either young or coarse natures, as well as 
she could drive. 

These feats of strength and cunning, statecraft and des- 
peration, reminded Hulda of a book she had read about 
the Norman knights in England kidnapping and robbing 
the poor Saxons ; and one description of King William 
the Conqueror suggested to Hulda that he was perhaps 
a Patty Cannon in his times, as his body and legs were 
short and powerful, like hers, and he could bend a bow 
riding on horseback that no other knight could Bend on 
foot with the legs planted firmly. He could not read nor 
write, and was superstitious, yet cruel as the grave. All 
this was true of Patty Cannon, whose feat of standing in 
a bushel measure and putting three hundred pounds of 
grain on her shoulder has been related. 

She often wrestled and bound, without assistance, strong 
black men fighting for their liberties. She could ride 


49 ° 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


horseback, sitting like men, in a way to make Joan of Arc 
seem a maid of mere tinsel. 

Hulda was dressed in her best clothes, her hair was 
tied in wide braids, her fine features and large, tender, 
yet seeking, gray eyes, never had been turned on Patty 
Cannon so directly. 

Her grandmother abandoned in a moment an attempt 
to be complaisant, and sternly ordered her to attend to 
Colonel McLane’s chamber. 

“ I can support you no longer, huzzy,” said the dark- 
eyed woman, her cheeks full of blood. “Make haste to 
find some easy life or Joe shall get you a husband. We 
are ruined. You must make money, do you hear !” 

“ Here is money, grandma !” said Hulda, producing 
some of the shillings of 1815. 

At the first glance of these Patty Cannon turned pale, 
but, in an instant, the hot blood rushed to her face again, 
and she swore a dreadful oath and chased Hulda, with 
uplifted hands, into the chamber of Allan McLane. 

“ Ah, Hulda, inflaming your poor grandmother again !” 
said that carefully clad and game-fed gentleman. “ Now, 
now, lovely girl, it’s not conservative. Honor thy father 
and mother, and grandmother, of course ; didn’t I teach 
you that?” 

“What is it to be conservative?” Hulda asked, sitting 
before the fire, while the Colonel ran over her straight 
feet and tall, willowy figure, and stopped, a little chilled 
by her clear, dewy eyes. 

“Conservative? why, it’s never to rush on anything; 
to oppose rushing; to — to be a bulwark against in- 
novations. To prefer something you have tried, and 
know.” 

“Like you?” asked Hulda. 

“Yes, your benefactor, instead of having some impul- 
sive passion. Of course, you never loved in this place?” 

“ It is the only place I know. To be conservative, as 


HULDA BELEAGUERED. 


49 1 


you call it, I must take my life and opportunity as I find 
them, like something I have tried and know.” 

“ Ah, Hulda ! I see you have a radical, perverse some- 
thing in you, to twist my meaning so close. You do not 
belong to this vile spot, except by consanguinity. It 
would be perfectly conservative for you to look to a bet- 
ter settlement.” 

“You have hinted that before,” Hulda said, serene in 
his presence as a young woman used to proposals. “ I 
do want to change this life, but I cannot do it and be 
conservative. I must fasten upon a free impulse, a nat- 
ural chance of some kind. God has kept my heart pure 
in this dreadful place, where I was born. Why are you 
here, if you are conservative? It is not a gentleman’s 
resort.” 

He grew a little angry at this thrust, but she continued 
to look at him quietly, unaware that she was impertinent. 

“I often have business, Hulda, with Joe and Patty; 
negroes are very high, and we must buy them where they 
are to be had. But a deepening religious interest in you 
often attracts me here.” 

“Why religious as well as conservative, sir?” 

“ I have been afraid that the sights you see here, after 
the good instructions I have given you, might make you 
an infidel.” 

“ What is an infidel ?” 

“One who, being unable to explain certain evils in life, 
refuses to believe anything. That is the case with Van 
Dorn, a very bad man. Stepfather Joe is always con- 
servative on that subject. Deviate as much as he 
may, he never disbelieves. Aunt Patty, too, erratic as 
she is, holds a conservative position on a Great First 
Cause.” 

Here McLane drew out his gold spectacles, and turned 
the leaves of his Bible over, and pointed Hulda a place 
to read, beginning, “The fool hath said in his heart, 


492 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


There is no God.” At his command she read it, with 
faith, yet observation, her mind being fully alert to the 
warning Van Dorn had left her, that in his absence her 
great trial was to be. 

McLane was wearing a gray English suit, with full 
round paunch, sleek all over the body, his hair a little 
gray, his gold glasses dangling in his hand, patent var- 
nished slippers and silk stockings, and a silk scarf and 
cameo pin in it, and a cameo of his deceased sister upon 
his finger-ring, marking his attire ; his eyes, of a pop kind, 
much too far forward, and blue as old china, and yet an 
animal, not a spiritual blue — the tint of washing-blue, not 
of distance ; a hare-lip somewhere in his talk, though the 
fulness of his very red lips hardly allowed place for it ; 
and his nose and brows stern and military, as if he had 
been a pudding stamped with the die of a Roman emperor 
or General Jackson. 

He watched her reading with censorship, yet desire, 
patronage, and oiliness together. 

Glancing up when she had read far enough, Hulda 
thought he was looking at her as if she was some rarer 
kind^of negress. 

“ Beautifully read, Hulda! I never go to such places 
as theatres, but you might be, I should say, an actress. 
Don’t think of it, however ! Very unconservative profes- 
sion ! I take great pride in you, my lovely girl ; suppose 
I take you home with me !” 

He walked to her stool, and laid his warm hand on 
her neck, standing behind her; she did not move nor 
change color. 

“ Something has happened to me, Colonel McLane,” 
Hulda spoke, clear as a bell out of'a prison, “to make 
even Johnson’s Cross Roads good and happy. Can you 
guess what it is ?” 

She bent her head back, and looked up fearlessly at 
him, as if he were the negro now. 


HULDA BELEAGUERED. 493 

“Not religious ecstasy?” he said. “Not camp-meet- 
ing or revival conversion, I hope. That’s vile.” 

“No, Colonel. It is knowing a pure young man, whose 
love for me is natural and unselfish.” 

“ Great God !” spoke McLane, removing his hand. 
“Not some kidnapper?” 

“ No,” Hulda said, “ no slave-dealer of any kind. They 
cannot make him so. He is perfectly conservative, Colo- 
nel, as to that vileness. I believe he is a gentleman, too.” 

“You must have great experience in that article,” he 
sneered, looking angry at her. 

“ I have seen you and my lover ; you have the best 
clothes, and profess more. He has a nature that your 
opportunities would bring real refinement from. He re- 
spects me, wretched as I am ; I read it in his eyes. You 
are looking for a way to degrade me in my own feelings, 
yet to deceive me. Can you be a gentleman ?” 

She was serepe as if she had said nothing, though she 
rose up, and stood at one side of the fireplace, opposite 
him ; between them was a print of General Jackson rid- 
ing over the British. 

In that moment Allan McLane felt that the girl was 
cheap at her grandmother’s figure. 

He had always conceived her a flexible, peculiar child ; 
in a few minutes she had grown years, and become a rare 
and nearly stately woman, not now to be moulded, but to 
be tempted with large, worldly propositions. 

“ May I ask who this lover is that I am so much be- 
neath, Hulda — I, who have taught you the accomplish- 
ments you chastise me with ? I found you sand ; I made 
you crystal.” 

He drew out a large pongee handkerchief, and really 
dropped some tears into it. She continued, cool and un- 
moved : 

“My love is Levin Dennis, from Princess Anne. I 
am not afraid to tell it.” 


494 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Why ?” 

“ Because I want his danger and mine to be fully known 
to him, and make him a man.” 

The Colonel folded his pongee, and came again to 
Hulda’s side. 

“ That dissipated boy ! Oh, Hulda, where is your real 
pride? He has abandoned his mother. He is a poor 
gypsy. No, I must save you from such a mistake. It 
is my duty to do it.” 

“ I thank you for teaching me, whatever made you do 
it. If I could awaken in you some unselfishness towards 
me and my new love, sir, it would be the greatest gratitude 
I could show you. You conceal so many hard, bad things 
under your word ‘ conservative,’ that the gentle feelings, 
like forgiveness, have forsaken you, I fear.” 

“ No,” the Colonel said, stiffly, his shoulders becoming 
more military, “ insults to my honor I never forgive. Peo- 
ple who do not resent, have no conservative principle.” 

“ I forgive, as I hope to be forgiven, Joe, Aunt Patty, 
Van Dorn, and you. I hope pity and mercy and sweet, 
unselfish love, such as I think mine is, may grow in all of 
you ! Oh, Colonel,” — she turned to him earnestly, and, 
raising her hands to impress him, he merely noted the 
elegance of her wrists and brown arms — “the buying and 
selling of these human beings makes everybody unfeel- 
ing. It is stealing their souls and bodies, whether they 
be bought at the court-house or kidnapped on the roads. 
My dream of joy is to have a husband who will work 
with his own free hands, and till his little farm, and sail 
his vessel, without a slave. Above that I expect and ask 
nothing from the dear God who has so long been my pro- 
tector in this den of crime.” 

“Warm or cold, hectoring or tender, you are splendid, 
Hulda,” McLane said, his face fairly refulgent. “ Now 
let me show you a conservative picture of your real de- 
serts. I am a bachelor. I keep an elegant house in 


HULDA BELEAGUERED. 


495 


Baltimore. My table is supplied with the best in the 
market ; my servants are my slaves, and never disobey 
me ; my paintings are celebrated ; books I never run to — 
they are radical things — but I can buy them ; my carriage 
is the best Rahway turn-out, and my horses are Diomeds. 
In Frederick County I have an estate, in sight of the moun- 
tains. As a Christian act, I will take you away from this 
spot, to which you seem but half kindred, and make you 
my wife.” 

“ You ask me to marry you ?” 

“ Conservatively ; that is, continue to be my pupil, and 
obey me. I will bring youf mind out of its ignorance, 
your body out of rags, your associations out of crime. I 
will provide for you, as you are obedient, while I live and 
after I am dead. You shall travel with me, and see 
bright cities — New Orleans, Charleston, Havana. If 
you remain here, you will be another Patty Cannon or 
go to jail. There ! Look at it conservatively : warmth, 
riches, pleasure, attention, change, dress to become you, 
a watch and jewels, against villainy and lowness of every 
kind.” 

“ How are you to be repaid for this ?” 

“ By your love.” 

“ But it is not mine to give ; Levin has it.” 

“ Pooh ! that*s beneath you.” 

“But it is gone; I cannot get it back; it will not 
come.” 

“Give me yourself,” McLane said, drawing her towards 
him ; “ the refinements I do not care about. Be mine !” 

The girl allowed herself to be brought nearly to his 
side, and, as he bent to kiss her with his large, compla- 
cent lips, she glided from his hands. 

“ I could never stoop,” said Hulda, “ to be even the 
wife of a negro dealer.” 

He colored to the eyes, yet with admiration of her 
almost aristocratic composure. 


49 6 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ You could not stoop to me ?” he said. “ Not from 
your father’s gallows ?” 

“No; he was a robber, but a bold one. You only 
receive the goods.” 

She was gone ; and he stood, with evil lights in his face, 
but no shame. He drank some brandy from a flask, and 
murmured, “ Now I have an insult to revenge, as well as 
a fancy to be gratified ; her father must have been a cool 
rogue. Well, everything has to be done by force here ; 
Patty Cannon shall see my gold.” 


Chapter XLI. 

AUNT patty’s LAST TRICK. 

Opposite McLane’s room was the vestibule to the 
slave-pen in the garret, a room Van Dorn usually slept in. 
With her emotions profoundly excited, though she had 
not revealed them — her modesty having received a stab 
that now brought bitter tears to her eyes, and blushes, 
unseen except by the angels, whose white wings had hid- 
den them from her tempter— Hulda fled into this room to 
deliberate upon her dire extremity. 

Three persons only were now in the house, each one 
an interested party in her ruin ; the man she had left, and 
Cy James, who was full of cowardly passion for her, and 
Patty Cannon, who, in her present frame of mind, would 
gloat to see Hulda’s virtue sacrificed as something incon- 
sequential and merry and heartless. 

“ Perhaps I can fly to our old house across the State 
Line, and take refuge with the new tenant there,” Hulda 
thought. “ Oh ! I wish Van Dorn was here ; he is so brave ; 
and when he left me his kiss was like my father’s.” 

Chains clanked, and the drone of low hymns came 
down the hatchway from the slave-pen. 


AUNT PATTY’S LAST TRICK. 


497 

“There is a white man up there,” Hulda reflected; 
u dare I go up to see ?” 

She unlocked the padlock, and stepped up the ladder. 
At the pen door she peeped, but could not make out any- 
thing in the blackness. Then she pulled the peg out of 
the staple, and walked into the sickly odor of the jail. 

“How many are here?” Hulda asked. “I hear you, 
but cannot see.” 

“ Three men, one old woman, and some little things, 
makes the present contents of Pangymonum,” spoke up 
a rough, cheery voice, “ an’, by smoke ! it’s jess enough.” 

“Is it the white man that talks?” 

“ He says he’s white, but they think it’s goin’ to be easy 
hokey-pokey to pass him off for a nigger.” 

Her eyes soon recognized the speaker as he said, “ By 
smoke! miss, you’re not much like a Johnson. I reckon 
you’re Huldy.” 

“Yes, and you, sir ?” 

“I was Jimmy Phoebus before I was a nigger.” 

The girl went rapidly up to him, and put her arms 
around him. 

“Thank God!” she said, “you are not dead. Levin 
Dennis, my dear friend, wept to think you were at the 
river bottom. But, quick, sir; I may be caught here. 
Are you all true to each other ?” 

“ Yes, the traitor’s cut his wizzen. Speak out, Huldy !” 

“I heard Patty Cannon mutter that she was going to 
set her black man free to kidnap for her. Hark ! I 
must fly.” 

Hulda descended the ladder in time to surprise Cy 
James coming up. He bent his goose neck down as he 
leaned his hands upon his knees, and, looking up into 
her face, ejaculated, 

“ Hokey-pokey ! By smoke ! And Pangymonum, too.” 
####### 

“Samson,” said Jimmy Phoebus, as soon as Hulda dis- 
32 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


498 

appeared, “ git ready to be a first-class liar; I want you 
to take up Patty Cannon’s offer.” 

“An’ leave you yer alone, Jimmy? I can’t do it.” 

“ Don’t be a fool, Samson. Ironed here, we can’t help 
nobody. Make your way to Seaford and Georgetown, 
and go round the Cypress Swamp to Prencess Anne. 
Alarm the pungy captains ; fur Johnson’ll try to run us 
by sail, I reckon, down the bay to Norfolk. I’ve got a 
file that cymlin-headed feller give me, an’ I reckon I’ll 
git out of my irons about the time you git to Judge Cus- 
tis’s. There ! ole Patty’s coming.” 

“Go, Samson,” spoke the Delaware colored man. 
“ I’m younger than you, and I’ll fight as heartily under 
Mr. Phoebus’s orders.” 

Aunt Hominy’s voice came in blank monologue out 
of the background : 

“ He tuk dat debbil’s hat, chillen, an’ measured us in 
wid little Vessy.” 

******* 

That evening there was a long, free conference be- 
tween Samson and Patty Cannon, in her kitchen, next to 
the bar, where Hulda heard laughing and invitations to 
drink, and all the sounds of perfect equality, the negro’s 
piquant sayings and bonhommie seeming to disarm and 
please the designing woman, whose familiarity was at 
once her influence and her weakness, and she lavished 
her sociable nature on blacks and whites. Samson was 
so fearless and observing that he betrayed no interest in 
escaping, and came slowly into the range of her temper- 
ament ; but, as Hulda peeped, towards midnight, into the 
kitchen, she saw old Samson kindly patting juba, while 
Patty was executing a drunken dance. 

As the latter dropped upon a pallet bed she had there, 
and fell into a doze, the colored man quietly raised the 
latch and walked off the tavern porch. 

******* 


AUNT PATTY’S LAST TRICK. 


499 


In the morning dawn horses and voices were heard by 
Hulda, and she recognized Joe Johnson’s steps in the 
house. He shook Patty Cannon, but could not awaken 
her; then looked into Van Dorn’s room, and found Hulda, 
apparently sound asleep, and heard his name called by 
Allan McLane across the hall : 

“Joe! not so loud. Be conservative. Come in; I’m 
waiting for you. Is all done and fetched ?” 

“The bloke with the steeple felt will never snickle,” 
spoke the ruffian. 

“ Good, good, Joe ! Vengeance is mine, and it’s a 
conservative saying. My dear sister is at peace.” 

“ The two yaller pullets have slipped you ; the abigail 
mizzled to the funeral with your niece, and t’other dell 
must have smelt us, and hopped the twig.” 

“ Not tasteful language at all, Joe. I don’t understand 
you. Where are the two bright wenches, Virgie and 
Roxy ?” 

“ Roxie’s in Baltimore ; Virgie’s run away.” 

“Run? Where? Don’t trifle with me, Joe Johnson ! 
Conservative as I am, I don’t like it, sir. Where could 
she have run ?” 

“There’s no way for her to slip us but by water or 
through the Cypress Swamp, Colonel. She ain’t safe 
this side of Cantwell’s bridge. Word has gone out, and 
every road is watched.” 

“ But Van Dorn is beaten back ; he hasn’t made a sin- 
gle capture ; the niggers drove him out of Dover with fire- 
arms, and he is wounded somewhere.” 

The tall kidnapper turned pale, and then consigned 
Van Dorn’s shade to eternal torment. 

“ Don’t swear before me, sir !” McLane, also irritated, 
exclaimed. “ It’s not conservative, and I won’t permit it. 
How do I know Meshach Milburn is dead ? who did it?” 

“ Black Dave fired the barker, and saw him settled.” 

“ Send him here J” 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


500 

The negro came in, red-eyed, and hoarse with diseased 
lungs, and stood, the wreck of a once gigantic and regular 
man. 

“ Gi’ me a drink,” he muttered; “I’m mos’ dead wi’ 
misery an’ cold.” 

“ Tell this man what you did,” Joe Johnson spoke; 
“you waited till you saw the hat at the window, and 
fired, and fetched hat an’ man to the ground ?” 

Swallowing a thimbleful of McLane’s brandy, the ne- 
gro grunted “Blood!” and looked tremblingly at his 
hands. 

“What shape of hat was it?” McLane asked, shaking 
the negro savagely ; “ was it like this ?” shaping his own 
soft slouched hat to a point. 

Black Dave looked, and shook his head. 

“ Not like that ? Damnation !” 

“No swearing, Colonel, before us conservatives,” vent- 
ured Joe Johnson ; “ what was the hat like, Dave ? You’re 
drunk.” 

“ Like dis, I reckon.” He modelled the crown into a 
bell form with his finger. 

Joe Johnson and McLane looked at each other a minute 
with mutual accusation and confusion, and the former un- 
ceremoniously knocked the negro down with his great fist. 

“No gold of mine for this job, Joe Johnson,” said Al- 
lan McLane; “in your conservatism to save your own 
skin, you have let your tool kill an innocent man.” 

He waved his hand, with all his strong will, towards 
the door, and shut it in the kidnapper’s face. Then, in 
haughty emotion, not like fear, but disappointed pride 
and revenge, McLane sat down, glanced around him as 
if to determine the next movement, and instinctively 
reached his hand towards his Bible, which he opened at 
a marked page, and softly read, till tears of baffled vin- 
dictiveness and counterfeited humility stopped his voice, 
as follows : 


AUNT PATTY*S LAST TRtCK. 


Sot 

“ ‘ To everything there is a season, and a time to every 
purpose under the heaven : A time to be born and a time 
to die ; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which 
is planted ; a time to kill, and a time to heal ; a time to 
break down, and a time to build up . . . God requireth 
that which is past . . . man hath no pre-eminence above 
a beast, for all is vanity. ... a man should rejoice in his 
own works ; for that is his portion : for who shall bring 
him to see what shall be after him ?’ ” 

When tears of pious vindictiveness had closed the read- 
ing, Colonel McLane spread his pongee handkerchief on 
the bare floor, and knelt in silent and comfortably as- 
sured prayer. 

**##### 

Black Dave had crawled into the room where Hulda 
partly heard these revelations, and he entered the large 
closet under the concealed shaft to the prison pen, where 
his groans and mental agony touched Hulda’s commis- 
eration. She opened the trap, and crawled there too. 

“ Hush, Dave !” she whispered. “ What makes you so 
miserable ?” 

“ Missy, I’se killed a man. Dey made me do it. I’ll 
burn in torment. Lord save me !” 

“ Dave,” said Hulda, “ my poor father died for his of- 
fences. You can do no more ; but, like him, you can re- 
pent.” 

“ Oh, missy, I’s black. Rum an’ fightin’ has ruined 
me. Dar’s no way to do better. De law won’t let me 
bear witness agin de people dat set me on. How kin I 
repent unless I confess my sin? De law won’t let me 
confess.” 

“ Confess your poor, wracked soul to me, Dave. The 
Lord will hear you, though you dare not turn your face 
to him.” 

“ Missy, once I was in de Lord’s walk. My han’s was 
clean, my face clar, my stummick unburnt by liquor. I 


502 THE ENTAILED HAT. 

stood in no man’s way ; at de church dey put me fo’ward. 
My soul was happy. One day I licked a man bigger dan 
me. It made me proud an’ sassy. I backslid, an’ wan’t 
no good to be hired out to steady people ; so de taverns 
got me, an’ den de kidnappers used me, an’ now de blood 
of Cain an’ Abel is on my forehead forever.” 

Hulda knelt by the murderer, and prayed with all her 
heart; not the self-conscious, special pleading of the 
prayer across the hall, but the humble prayer of the pen- 
itent on Calvary : “ Lord, we, of this felon den, ask to be 
with thee in Paradise.” 

* * * * * * * 

The whole of the next day was spent in preparations 
for flight by Patty and her son-in-law. 

A boat of sufficient size, and crew to man it, had to 
be procured down the river, and this necessitated two jour- 
neys, one of Patty, to Cannon’s Ferry, another by Joe, to 
Vienna and Twiford’s wharf. 

During their absence Cy James was equally intent on 
something, and Hulda saw him in the ploughed field 
near the old Delaware cottage, under the swooping buz- 
zards, directing the farmer where to guide his plough, and 
it seemed, in a little while, that one of the horses had 
fallen into a pit there. 

Later on Hulda observed Cy James, with a spade, 
digging at various places near Patty Cannon’s former 
cottage. 

“ All are at work for themselves,” Hulda thought, “ ex- 
cept Levin and me. How often have I seen Aunt Patty 
slip to secret places in the night, or by early dawn, when 
she looked every window over to see if she was watched. 
Her beehives were her greatest care.” 

A sudden thought made Hulda stand still, and cast 
the color from her cheeks. 

“ They are all going away. I shall be taken, too, or 
kept for worse evil here. My mother, in Florida, hates 


AUNT PATTY’S LAST TRICK. 


5°3 

me ; she has told me so. I know the marriage Allan 
McLane means for me — to be his white slave ! Levin is 
poor, and his mother is poor, too ; they say Patty Can- 
non has buried gold. Perhaps God will point it out to 
me.” 

She slipped down the Seaford road, and walked up the 
lane in the fields she knew so well. No person was in 
the hip-roofed cottage. Hulda went among the outbuild- 
ings, and began to inspect the beehives, made of sections 
of round trees, and the big wooden flower-pots Patty Can- 
non had left behind her. 

She was only interrupted by a gun being fired in the 
ploughed field, and saw the pertinacious buzzards there 
fall dead from the air as they exasperated the plough- 
man. 

******* 

“ I shall have one piece of fun in Maryland before I 
go,” Hulda heard her stepfather say, as he went past her 
bed to ascend the hatchway at morn, “ and that is to burn 
the nigger who mugged me. This is his day.” 

Almost immediately he came, cursing, down the ladder, 
followed by a jeering laugh from above, and the cry, 
“ We’ll all see you hanged yit, by smoke ! an’ mash an- 
other egg on your countenance, nigger-buyer !” 

In a moment or two a tremendous quarrel was going 
on below stairs between the kidnapper and his wife’s 
mother, and Hulda believed they were murdering each 
other; and, peeping once to see, beheld Johnson holding 
Patty to the floor, and stuffing her elegant hair, which 
had been torn out in the scuffle, into her mouth. 

“ I’ll be the death of you, old fence, before I go,” he 
shouted ; “ the verdict would be, ‘ I did the county a ser- 
vice.’ ” 

“ Come away there !” cried Allan McLane, pushing past 
Hulda and between the combatants. “Shame on you, 
Joe ! To whip your grandmother is hardly conservative. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


5°4 

Here is an errand that will pay you well : my wench Vir- 
gie has been caught.” 

The kidnapper released the woman and turned to his 
guest. 

“ Good news !” he said ; “ ef it puts my neck in the 
string, I’ll fetch her fur you.” 

His countenance had begun to assume a sensual ex- 
pression, when Patty Cannon, to whom his back was 
turned, rushed upon him like a tornado, lifted him from 
his feet, and threw him through the back door into the 
yard and bolted him out. McLane retreated by the oth- 
er door. 

“ Thank heaven !” reflected Hulda, looking down in ter- 
ror, “ no one is murdered yet, and I have another day of 
grace to wait for Levin.” 

******* 

“ Cunnil McLane,” said Patty Cannon, in his room 
that night, “what interest have you in the quadroon gal 
an’ Huldy, too? You don’t want ’em both, Cunnil?” 

“No, Aunt Patty. All my views are conservative. 
Quite so ! Hulda I want to reform and model to my 
needs. She’ll ornament me. By taking the girl Virgie 
from my niece Vesta, I desire to punish the latter for con- 
senting to the degradation of our family, and marrying 
the forester, Milburn. She loves this quadroon ; there- 
fore, I want to deprive her of the girl : Joe is to bring her 
to me, do you see ?” 

His face expressed the indifference he felt to Virgie’s 
safety on the way, and the coarse suggestion gave Patty 
Cannon her opportunity : 

“ Cunnil, there’s but three in the house to-night ; I am 
one.” 

“I am two, Patty.” 

“And three is purty Huldy, Cunnil !” 

They looked at each other a few minutes in silence. 

“ There is two to one,” said Patty Cannon, with a gig- 


AUNT PATTY’S LAST TRICK. 


505 

gle. “ We have no neighbors that air not used to noises 
yer.” 

The silence was restored while the two products of 
men-dealing read each other’s countenances. 

“ I made a very conservative and liberal proposition to 
her, Patty, and she insulted me, yet beautifully. But I 
owe her a grudge for it.” 

“ Insulted you, Cunnil ? The ongrateful huzzy ! Can’t 
you insult her back? She never dared to disobey me. 
Her pride once broke down, she’ll be like other gals, I 
reckon.” 

“ That’s true, no doubt. But, Patty, haven’t you a little 
remorse about it, considering she’s your grandchild V 1 

“ My mother had none fur me, honey,” the old woman 
chuckled, familiarly. 

“ What is that story I have heard something of, about 
your origin, Patty?” 

“ I don’t know no more about it, Cunnil, than a pore, 
ignorant gal would, you know. I’ve hearn my grandfa- 
ther was a lord. A gypsy woman enticed his son and he 
married her. His father drove him from his door, an’ his 
wife fetched him on her money to Canady, where she 
went into the smugglin’ business at St.John’s, half-way 
between Montreal and the United States.” 

“ And he was hanged there for assassinating a friend 
who detected him ?” 

“ They says so, honey. Anyhow, he was hanged. We 
gals was beautiful. Says mother : 1 It’s a hard world, but 
don’t let it beat you, gals ! Marry ef you kin. Anyway, 
you must live, and you can’t live off of women.’ I mar- 
ried a Delaware man, and so I quit bein’ Martha Hanley 
and became Patty Cannon.”* 

* The origin of Patty Cannon is in doubt ; a pamphlet published 
near her time gives it as above, with strong circumstantial embel- 
lishments, yet there are neighbors who say she was of Delaware and 
Maryland stock — a Baker and a Moore. The weight of tradition is 
the other way. 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


506 

“ And what a career you have led, Aunt Patty ! Lived 
anywhere but in this old pocket between the bays, you 
would have had the reputation of Captain Kidd. Tell 
me now, conservatively, was not your own helpless child- 
hood the cause of your mistakes, and does it never make 
you feel for other sparrow-birds like Hulda ?” 

The black-haired woman, with a certain evil-thinking, 
like one reflected upon harshly, finally clapped her bold 
black eyes on McLane’s, and replied, chuckling : 

“I don’t know as it do, Cunnil. Before my mother 
pinted the way, I loved the men. I loved ’em to be bad. 
Mommy tuk us as we drifted. An’ as fur Huldy yer, her 
mother throws her onto me ; she’s not like the Cannons 
an’ Johnsons ; she’s full of pride, and,” with an oath, “let 
it be tuk out of her ! Will you pay my price ?” 

He hesitated. 

“ It’s not the price, Patty ; it’s the way. Isn’t it cow- 
ardly ?” 

“Yes,” said Patty, saucily, “it’s kidnappin’. That’s 
the trade yer. Pay down the money, Cunnil, an’ this bare 
room will brighten to be your wedding chamber. Pah ! 
are you a man !” 

Her words aroused the visions self-love can reluctantly 
repulse, and which, entertained but an instant, grow irre- 
sistible. 

The limber, maturing, rounding form of Hulda stepped 
on the footstool of his mind, touched his knee, and ex- 
haled the aroma of her youth like a subtile musk, till he 
leaned back languidly, as if he smoked a pipe and on its 
bowl her bust was painted, and all her modesties dissolved 
into the intoxication. Brutality itself grew natural to this 
vision, as a fiercer joy and substitute for the deceit he 
could no longer practice. The child had flown from her 
in the instant of his grasping it, like a pale butterfly, but 
there remained where it had floated, a silken and nubile 
essence, fairy and humanity in one, clad in pure thoughts 


AtJNT PATTY’S LAST TRICK. $07 

and sweet respect, the profanation of which would be as 
rare a game as Satan’s struggle with the soul of Eve. 

Her innocence and spirit, self-respect and awakened 
womanly consciousness, weakness and sensibility, mettle 
and beauty, presented themselves by turns ; and the cold, 
woodeny room, the neglected tavern, the autumn night 
wind coming down the chimney and starting the fire, all 
seemed instinctive, like him, with mischief, as if Patty Can- 
non’s soul flew astraddle of a broom and led a hundred 
witches. 

McLane was fifty ; his family was a stiff commercial 
one, that had generally kept demure, yet grasping, and 
practised the conservatism he also boasted of, but had 
departed from : he was the outlaw of the house, yet ele- 
vating its tenets into an aggressive shibboleth, the more 
so that he prospered by anti-progress. 

He was a backer of domestic slave-dealers, and put his 
money into forms of gain men hesitated at ; not only at 
the curbstone, for usury, but behind pawnbrokers and 
sporting men, in lottery companies and liquor-houses, and, 
it was said, in the open slave-trade, too, clippers for which 
occasionally stole out of the Chesapeake on affected 
trading errands to the East Indies, and came home with 
nothing but West India fruits. 

He strove to maintain his credit by ostentatious abhor- 
rence of novelties and heterodoxies, and of all liberal 
agitations, and had the sublime hardihood to carry his 
Bible into every sink of shame, as if it was the natural 
baggage of a gentleman, and expected with him ; and he 
would rebuke “ blasphemy ” while bidding at the slave 
auction or sitting in a bar-room full of kidnappers, among 
many of whom he passed for a religious standard. 

No portion of that Bible gave him any delight or occu- 
pation, however, except the Old Testament, with its thor- 
oughgoing codes of servitude, concubinage, and an-eye- 
for-an-eye. He knew the Jewish laws better than the 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


508 

Scribes and Pharisees in the time of Herod and John, 
and had persuaded himself that the mental endorsement 
and, wherever possible, the practice of these, constituted 
a firm believer. Revenge, intolerance, formality, and self- 
sleekness had become so much his theory that he did not 
know himself whether he was capable of doing evil pro- 
vided he wanted anything. 

Not particularly courageous, he was so destitute of 
sensibility that he felt no fear anywhere ; and, generally 
going among his low white inferiors, he was in the habit 
of being looked up to, and rather preferred their society. 
On everything he had an opinion, and permitted no 
stranger in Baltimore to entertain any. The riot spirit, 
so early and so frequent in that town, reposed upon such 
vulturous and self-conscious social pests as he, ever claim- 
ing to be the public tone of Maryland. 

“ Patty,” said Allan McLane, in his hare-lip and bland, 
yet hard, voice, like mush eaten with a bowie-knife, “ I 
may pay you this money and you may fail to deliver the 
property. Will she be tractable ?” 

“ Cunnil, Til scare her most to death. She’ll hide from 
me yer by your fire, and my voice outside the door will 
keep her in yer till day.” 

McLane went to his portmanteau and unlocked it, and 
took out rolls of notes and a buckskin bag of gold. 

The yellow lustre seemed to flash in Patty Cannon’s 
rich black eyes, like the moon overhead upon a well. 

“ How beautiful it do shine, Cunnil !” she said. “ Noth- 
ing is like it fur a friend. Youth an’ beauty has to go 
together to be strong, but, by God! gold kin go it 
alone.” 

He counted out two piles, one of notes and one of 
gold, using his gold spectacles upon his hawk nose to do 
so, and said : 

“ Patty, I’ve bought many a grandchild with the old 
woman, but this is the first child I have bought from the 


AUNT PATTY’S LAST TRICK. 


509 

grandmother. Now fulfil your contract and earn your 
money !” 

He put his spectacles in his pocket, stretched his gai- 
tered slippers before the fire, looked at his watch and let 
the crystal seal drop on his sleek abdomen, and his vit- 
reous, blue-green eyes filled with color like twin vases in 
a druggist’s window. He was ready and anxious to sub- 
stitute the ruffian for the tempter. 

Patty Cannon, glancing at the money on the table, and 
bearing a lamp, started at once through the house, calling 
“ Huldy ! Huldy !” 

Nothing responded to the name. 

She searched from room to room, peering everywhere, 
and made the circuit twice, and, taking a lantern, went 
into the windy night and round the bounds of the old 
tavern. 

The house was easily explored, having no cellar nor 
outbuildings, and the trap to the slave-pen was locked 
fast. The girl’s shawl and hat were also gone. 

“ She’s heard us, I reckon,” the old woman muttered; 
“she’s run away an’ ruined me. Joe’s cruel to me ; Van 
Dorn is gone ; without gold I go to the poor-house. Mc- 
Lane is pitiless — ” 

She dwelt upon the sentence, and, with only an in- 
stant’s hesitation, turned into the tavern again and but- 
toned the outer door. 

Beneath her feather bed she reached her hand and 
drew out a large object, took a horn from the mantel and 
sprinkled it with something contained there, and then, in 
a bold, masculine walk, stamping hard, went in the dark 
up the open stairs again, talking, as she advanced, loud- 
ly, complaisantly, or sternly, as if to some truant she was 
coaxing or forcing. Finally, at McLane’s chamber, she 
knocked hard, crying : 

“Open, Cunnil ! Here’s the bashful creatur! She 
daren’t disobey no mo’. Step out and kiss her, Cunnil !” 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


5 ™ 

“ Ha !” said McLane, throwing open his door, out of 
which the full light of fire and candles gleamed, “ con- 
servative, is she ? Well, let her enter !” 

As he made one step to penetrate the darkness with 
his dazzled eyes, Patty Cannon silently thrust against his 
heart a huge horse-pistol and pulled the trigger : a flash 
of fire from the sharp flint against the fresh powder in 
the pan lit up the hall an instant, and the heavy body 
of the guest fell backward before his chair, and over 
him leaned the woman a moment, still as death, with 
the heavy pistol clubbed, ready to strike if he should 
stir. 

He did not move, but only bled at the large lips, ghast- 
ly and unprotesting, and the cold blue eyes looked as 
natural as life. 

Patty Cannon took the chair and counted the money. 


Chapter XLII. 
beaks. 

The wind was blowing in spells, like crowds moved 
during an argument, at one time mute as awe, again 
murmurous, and sometimes mutinous and fierce, when 
Hulda, having heard a few words only of her grandmoth- 
er’s overture, glided from the old tavern and passed on 
into the night, terrified but not unthinking, till she reached 
some large pines that seemed to say over her head, high 
up towards heaven : “ Where now, oh where, oh-h-h 
wh-h-here, in the co-o-o-old, co-o-o-old w-h-h-h-ilderness 
of the wh-h-h-orld ?” 

“ Anywhere !” answered Hulda, not afraid of cold or 
nature, so intense had become her fear of men and wom- 
en. “ Still, where ? I might go to Cannon’s Ferry and 
tell my tale to those hard-hearted merchants, or to Sea- 


BEAKS, 51 1 

ford and beg a shelter somewhere there ; but first I will 
try our old cottage home again.” 

She went so quietly up the field lane that dogs could 
not have heard her, and, as she approached the little 
house, saw lights in it, and soon heard voices and saw 
moving figures within. 

Knowing every knot-hole and crack of the little dwell- 
ing, Hulda soon had a perfect view of the contents of the 
house by standing in the dark, a little distance from one 
of the low, small windows. 

A table stood in the middle of the main room, on which 
was an old mouldered chest with the earth clinging to it, 
and beside the chest were bones and shreds of clothing 
on the riven lid of the chest. 

“You swear that the evidence you give shall be the 
truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help 
you God !” exclaimed a small, chunky, Irish-looking per- 
son, presenting a book to be kissed by a scrawny, chin- 
less, goose-necked lad, whom Hulda immediately recog- 
nized as Cyrus James. 

“ Shall I take him, Doctor Gibbons ?” asked a fine-look- 
ing, easy-mannered man, of the magistrate. 

“ Yes, Mr. Clayton.” 

“Do you know the nature of an oath? What is it?” 

“ I’ll be fried like a slapper on the devil’s griddle ef I 
don’t tell right,” whined Cy James, zealously. 

“ No you won’t ; at least, not first. If you don’t tell 
me the truth I’ll have your two ears cut off on the pillory, 
and no slapper shall enter that hungry stomach of yours 
for a month. Goy !” 

He looked at Cy James as if he had a mind to bite his 
nose off as a mere beginning. 

“ Now, Hollyday Hicks, you and Billy Hooper and the 
other constables take away this box, which smells too 
loud here, as soon as the witness has sworn to it. When 
did you last see this box, James?” 


5 12 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ About ten year ago, sir, when I had been bound to 
Patty Cannon four year, I reckon, I see Patty an’ Joe 
Johnson an’ Ebenezer, his brother, all toting this chist to 
the field an’ a-buryin” of it.”* 

“ What did you see them put in that chest ?” 

“ A dead man — a nigger-trader. I can’t tell whether 
his name was Bell or Miller ; she killed two men nigh 
that time, an’ I was so little that I’ve got ’em mixed.” 

“ Did you see her kill this man ?” 

“ No, sir, I wasn’t home. I got home in time to see ’em 
packin’ him in the box. I hearn Patty tell the boys how 
she killed him. Oh ! she was proud of it, sir, becaze she 
didn’t have no help in it.” 

Half a dozen heads of constables, some of whom Hul- 
da knew, leaned forward together to hear the witness, 
while others removed the unsavory remains. Mr. Clay- 
ton continued : 

“ How did she say she killed him ?” 

“She said he come to Joe’s tavern with a borreyed 
hoss from East New Market, where he told the people he 
was buyin’ niggers, and would take fifteen thousand dol- 
lars wuth if he could git ’em. He was follered out, n’ 
Ebenezer Johnson got in ahead of him. lJ They told Kim 
the tavern was full, an’ he would be better tuk care of at 
a good woman’s little farm close by. They made him 
think, she said, that a gentleman with much money wasn’t 
alius safe at the tavern. Aunt Patty got him supper. He 
sit at the table after it a-pickin’ of his teeth. She got 
her pistol an’ went out in her garden a-hoein’ of her 
flowers. Once she come up on him at the window to 


* This incident is fully related in “ Niles’s Register ” of April 25, 
1829 (No. 919 of the full series), page 144, where also is a contempo- 
rary account of Patty Cannon’s arrest. The date of the exposure in 
this story is transposed from April to October. She was to have 
been tried in October, but died in May, about six weeks after her 
arrest. 


BEAKS. 


5*3 

shoot, but he turned quick, an’ she says to him : * Oh, sir, 
I only want to see if you didn’t need somethin’ more.’ 
‘No, no,’ says he; ‘I’ve made a rale good supper.’ ‘I 
loves my flowers,’ Aunt Patty says, ‘ an’ likes to hoe ’em 
at sundown, so they can sleep nice an’ soft.’ ‘ Do you ?’ 
says he ; ‘ I reckon you’re a kind woman.’ He turned 
around agin an’ begin to look over his pocket-book. She 
hoed an’ hoed, an’ hummed a little tune. All at once 
she slipped up, an’ I heerd her say, ‘ Boys, I give it to him 
good, right in the back of the head, an’ he fell on to the 
table, an’ the water he had been drinkin’ was red as cur- 
rant wine.’ ” 

“James Moore, I’ll swear you next,” the magistrate 
said to the new tenant of the farm ; and this man pro- 
ceeded to testify concerning the finding of the chest as 
he was ploughing in a wet spot where he had removed 
some brush. 

Cy James, being recalled, gave testimony as to other 
buried bodies, chiefly of children slaughtered in wanton- 
ness or jealousy, or to avoid pursuit. 

‘ Take this boy, Joe Neal,” said Constable Hicks,* 
“ and hold him fast.” 

“ Goy !” said Clayton, with a terrible frown at Cy 
James, “we may have to hang him yet! Guilty knowl- 
edge of these crimes for so many years, and exposure at 
last only for a private resentment, constitute an acces- 
sory. Well for you, depraved young man, if you had 
possessed the principle of this young gentleman !” 

The Senator placed his hand upon a sitting figure, and 


* Thomas Hollyday Hicks, the Union Governor of Maryland in 
1861, was at the date of these events member elect to the Legislature 
from the neighborhood of Patty Cannon’s operations, and was thir- 
ty-one years old. Lanman’s “ Dictionary of Congress ” says : “ He 
worked on his father’s farm when a boy, and served as constable and 
sheriff of his county.” 


33 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


514 

there arose in Hulda’s sight the image of her lover, Levin 
Dennis. 

“Constables,” said Dr. Gibbons, the magistrate, “I 
shall give you your warrants now. The Maryland au- 
thorities propose, without waiting for extradition proceed- 
ings, to deliver your prisoners at the state line.” 

“ Goy !” said Clayton, “ they may have friends in the 
executive chambers at Annapolis. No, boys, act together, 
like patriots, as the Maryland and Delaware lads served 
in the same revolutionary brigade. Joe Johnson is due 
here at noon to-morrow : be careful not to disturb old 
Patty nor awaken her suspicions till he arrives. She is 
almost past doing evil, but he has a lifetime left to do it in.” 

“ Constable Neal, I’ll shove them over the line to you !” 
spoke the Maryland officer. 

“ Constable Wilson, look out when you lay on to old 
Patty : she may be loaded and go off,” exclaimed the Del- 
aware officer. 

“Doctor John Gibbons,” spoke Clayton, “waste no 
time with them at the hearing in Seaford, but get horses 
and send them right to Georgetown jail ; they are slip- 
pery as eels. Goy !” 

As Cy James was being taken to a secure place in the 
garret he turned to Levin Dennis, much wilted and crest- 
fallen. 

“ Oh, Levin,” he said, “ Huldy won’t have me now, I 
know. Won’t you stand by me, Levin ? She’s goin’ to 
marry you, and I’ll give ye all I’ve found.” 

“Huldy!” Levin exclaimed; “oh, must I leave her 
yonder at the tavern another night?” 

“No,” answered Hulda, coming forward ; “we are both 
preserved, my friend. But I must have made my bed in 
the forest this night if God had not directed me to you.” 

As they clasped each other fondly, Senator Clayton ex* 
claithed, 

“ What ? Doves among the rattlesnakes. Goy !” 


PLEASURE DRAINED. 


5*5 


Chapter XLIII. 

PLEASURE DRAINED. 

The dawn had not broken when that fleet traveller, 
Joseph Johnson, anticipating his enemies by hours, noise- 
lessly tied his horses at the tavern he had erected, and 
nearly fell into the arms of Owen Daw. 

“Joe,” said that scapegrace, “thar’s queer people hang- 
ing around yer. They say a blue chist has been dug 
outen the field yonder, an’ bones in it. I ’spect they’re 
a-lookin’ fur you, Joe.” 

“ I’ll give you a job, Owen,” said Johnson, quick on 
his feet as the boy. “ Run these horses into my wagon 
thar while I git some duds together before I hop the 
twig.” 

Slipping to the rear of the house, he entered, and looked 
in Patty’s room — she was not there ; a slight smell of 
gunpowder seemed to be in the hall. Passing rapidly up 
the stairs, Johnson saw a light shine in McLane’s room, 
and he kicked the door wide open, exclaiming, 

“ Bad luck everywhere ; the gal’s stone dead ; the beaks 
are round us. Wake up, McLane !” 

“ Joe !” said a voice, and Patty Cannon threw her arms 
around him. 

“ To burning fire with you !” bellowed the filial son. 
“Take your arms away!” 

“ Let us make up, Joe ! Everybody has run away from 
us. Huldy is gone, too. McLane is dead.” 

“ Dead ? Dead where ?” 

“There ” — she pointed to a feather-bed lying upon the 
floor, the outlines of which seemed unusually pointed and 
stiff for feathers, though it was sown up in its own blank- 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


5 ^ 

ets and quilts. Joe Johnson touched it with his foot and 
bounded back. 

“ Hell-cat !” he cried, “is this one of your tricks ?” 

“I did it fur you, Josie. He brought it on hisself. 
There’s his portmanteau full of money to pay our travel- 
ling expenses. He’s sewed up beautiful, and in the bay 
you can drop him to the bottom.” 

Joe Johnson’s face became almost livid pale, and, rush- 
ing upon Patty Cannon with both hands raised, he struck 
her to the floor and put his boot upon her. 

“If I had time, I’d have your life,” he hissed. “ But 
it would lose the up tucker a job. To-night I leave you 
forever. Margaretta, your daughter, wishes never to see 
you again. Take this crib and the blood you still must 
shed to keep your old heart warm, and take my curse to 
choke you on the gallows !” 

He rushed away and gave a low whistle at the window ; 
Daw and Joe’s brother, Ebenezer, a lower set and more 
sinister being, bounded up the stairs and loosened and 
drove before them the little band of captives. 

“ One word from you, white nigger, in all this journey 
to-day, scatters your brains in the woods !” 

Joe Johnson drew a pistol as he spoke, and Jimmy 
Phoebus saw his nervous determination too clearly to pro- 
voke it. 

“ Now, put this dab upon the wagon,” Johnson said, re- 
ferring to the bed, and it was carried down by the broth- 
ers, and the dead man’s portmanteau thrown in beside it. 

“Joe! Joe !” came the voice of Patty Cannon, from 
the guest’s room, “take the poor old woman that’s raised 
you along.” 

“ Stow yer wid !” he answered ; “ we go to be gentle- 
men in a land where you would spot us black. Cross 
cove and mollisher no more; raise another Joe Johnson, 
if you can, to make this old hulk lush with business : I 
give it to you.” 


PLEASURE DRAINED. 5 1 7 

He was gone. in the vague dawn. She fell upon her 
face across the little bar and moaned, 

“ A pore, pore, pore old woman !” 

How long she had been leaning there she did not know, 
till familiar sounds fell on her ears, and, looking up with 
a cry of recognition, she shouted, 

“ Van Dorn ! God bless you, Van Dorn ! Is you alive 
again ?” 

The Captain was supported in the arms of another 
person, who took him, ghastly pale, into the little bar and 
laid him upon her pallet, muttering, 

“ I loved him as I never loved A male.” 

##*#### 

The morning was well advanced, and the sun made 
the gaunt and steep old tavern rise like a mammoth from 
the level lands, and filled its upper front rooms with gold- 
en wine of light, as Patty Cannon sat in one of them by a 
window near the piazza, and talked to Van Dorn, whom 
she had tenderly washed and re-dressed, and placed him 
in her own comfortable rocking-chair of rushes, with his 
feet raised, as all unaffected Americans like, and blanket- 
ed, upon a second chair. 

Her woes and his relief made Patty social, yet tender, 
and the instincts of her sex had returned, to be petted 
and beloved. 

“Oh, Captain,” she said, fondly, “how clean and sweet 
you look, like my good man again. Don’t be cross to me, 
Van Dorn ! My heart is sad.” 

“ Chito , Patty ! chito ! Fie ! you sad ? I like to see you 
saucy and defiant. Let us not repent ! So Joe has left 
you ?” 

“ With cruel curses. My daughter hates me, he says, 
and means to be a lady where I can’t disgrace her. Oh, 
honey ! to raise a child and have it hate an’ despise you 
goes hard, even if I have been bad. There’s nothing left 
me now but you, Van Dorn \ oh, do not die 1” 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


518 

He coughed carefully, as if coughing was a luxury to 
be very mildly exerted, and wiped a little blood from his 
tongue and lip. 

“ I’ll try not to die till I comfort you some, Marta deli- 
cioso ! The ball is at my windpipe, and, when the blood 
trickles in, it makes me cough, and I must beware of emo- 
tions, the surgeon says, lest it drop into my lung and 
break a blood-vessel by some very spasmodic cough. So 
do not be too beautiful or I might perish.” 

He stroked his long yellow mustache with the dia- 
mond-fingered hand, and drew his velvet smoking-cap 
tight upon his silken curls, but he was too pale to blush 
as formerly, though he lisped as much, like a modest 
boy. 

“ Captain,” the woman said, pleased to crimson, “ you 
are so much smarter than me I’m afeard of you. Am I 
beautiful a little yet ? Do I please you ? I know you 
mock me.” 

“ O hala hala /” sighed Van Dorn. “ You are the star 
of my life. All that I am, you have made me. Patty, I 
worship you. When you are gone, human nature will 
breathe and wonder. Do you remember when first we 
met ?” 

“ A little, Captain. Tell it to me again. Praise me if 
you kin. I’m almost desolate.” 

Her lip trembled, and she glanced at the fields across 
the way, she had so long inhabited, where, as it seemed to 
her, more life than ever was visible to-day, though she did 
not look carefully. 

“ How many years it has been, Patty, we will not tell. 
I was coming home from Africa with an emigrant, a Brit- 
on, my capturer, indeed— that officer in the blockading 
squadron on that coast who seized my privateer, the Ida , 
with all her complement of Guinea slaves. His name 
was all I took from him — you got the rest — Van Dorn /” 

She stole a startled look at him out of her listening 


PLEASURE DRAINED. 519 

eyes, as if this might be unpleasant talk, but he parried it 
with a compliment. 

“ Chis ! Dios! What a family of beauties you were! 
Betty, with her hoyden air, and Jane, with her wealth of 
charms, and Patty, with her bold, rich eyes and conquer- 
ing will. We sailed into the Nanticoke by mistake for 
the Manokin. My friend had pitied my misfortunes and 
liked my company, and, when he broke me up as a slaver 
— having already been broken as a privateer — had said : 

1 Dennis, that country you praise so well has infatuated 
me ; I’ll resign my commission and buy a little vessel, 
and settle in America with you for the sake of my dear 
little daughter, Hulda Van Dorn.’ Ayme! that poor lit- 
tle wild-flower : where did she spend the chill night yes- 
terday, Patty, can you tell ?” 

He coughed again, very carefully, and his eye, the 
brighter for his fretted lungs, never left his hostess, as 
though he feared she might overlook some pleasing 
feature of his story. She trotted her foot and mut- 
tered : 

“ You made me jealous of her : I got to hate an’ fear 
her, lovey.” 

“ Voluptuous as two young widowers were after a long 
cruise, we tarried among you sirens, myself almost at the 
threshold of my home, where my wife believed me dead, 
yet waited longingly and waits this morn, dear Patty. 
Dios da fe! My friend, entasselled with bright Betty, 
sooner felt remorse at the spectacle of his little child so 
ill-caressed, and beckoned me away ; but he had shown 
his gold, and could better be spared than reckless I. You 
know the cool, deep game, dear Pat. Hala ha! I was' 
made to buy the poison you sisters gave Van Dorn, and 
seem the accomplice in his death : never till this week 
has that murder given up a testimony — the portion of 
the dead man’s coin your mother stole and hid, which 
Hulda inherited at last. Verdad es verde ! I became 


520 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


afraid to leave you : I am here at the death with you, my 
old enchantress.” 

A crack ran through the empty wooden house, which 
made her rise ; Van Dorn, as he was called, enjoyed her 
uneasiness, like a pallid mask painted with a smile. 

“ Captain,” she said, “ how many people I see out yon- 
der in the fields ! Maybe thar’s to be a fox-chase.” 

“Sit, Patty! Let me drink, in my last days of life, the 
wine lees of your memory. You are so dear to me ! Turn 
in the golden sun, that I may linger on that face which 
autumn’s ashes fall upon, though through the dead leaves 
I see the russet colors smoulder yet ! How daring was 
your girlhood : the poor blacksmith farmer, whose name 
you will transmit forever, fretted you with his sickness 
and his scruples, and, he aqui! you stilled him with the 
same cup you mixed for Betty’s husband. His daughter 
you gave to wife to his apprentice, a strong, stolid man, 
capable of heroism, Patty, for he died for you, his dear 
misleader, on the shameful scaffold, though all the crowd 
knew who his instigator was ; but, like a man, he died 
and never told.” 

“Van Dorn, you hurt me,” Patty broke out; “I can- 
not laugh to-day, and these tales depress me, honey. 
Where shall we go when you are well ?” 

“La gente pone, y Dios dispone! Stay yet, and chat 
awhile. I would not, for the world, see you discouraged, — 
you, unfathomable angel ! who, in this mangy corner of 
the globe, looked abroad over the land like Catherine, 
from her sterile throne, over the mighty steppes, and lev- 
ied war upon the hopes of man. How you did trouble 
Uncle Sam, great Patty, robbing his mails for years be- 
tween Baltimore and the Brandywine! Young Nichols 
still serves his term for that shrewd trick you taught him, 
of cutting the mail-bags open as he sat, with the corrupted 
drivers, on the crowded stage, stealthily throwing the val- 
uable letters in the road, to be gathered by a following 


PLEASURE DRAINED. 


521 

horseman.* £s admirable ! Young Perry Hutton, reared 
by you to kidnap, then to drive the mail and filch its let- 
ters — a Delaware boy, too — perished on the gallows for 
killing a mail-driver more scrupulous than himself, who 
detected him under his mask.f Young Moore — was he 
your connection, darling? — stopping the mail-stage at the 
Gunpowder Forge, fell under the driver’s buckshot.| And 
Hare—” 

“ Captain,” called Patty, “ I see men and boys all over 
the fields yonder, running and digging and dragging away 
the bresh. Is them ole buryins of mine suspected ?” 

“ Pshaw ! darling, ’tis your warm imagination, and 
Joe’s unkindness. I would make you happy with the 
memory of your daring acts. Qne maravilla ! In your 
little pets you stamped a life out, when another woman 
would only stamp her foot. There was that morning 
when your fire would not burn, and a little black child 
bawled with the cold and angered you ; if its body is ever 
dug up where it was laid, the skull cracked with the billet 
of wood will tell the tale. You once suspected me of tru- 
antry from your charms — Quedo , quedo ! exacting dame — 
and the pale offspring of poor Hagar you threw upon the 
blazing backlog, and grimly watched it burn. The pur- 
sued children whose cries you could not still, that yet are 
stilled till hell shall have a voice, not even you can num- 
ber. Evangelists, O Patty, dipping their pens in blood 
of saints to write your crimes, would make the next age 
infidel, where you will seem impossible, and all of us my- 
thology !” 


* See “ Niles’s Register,” 1826. 

t See “ Niles’s Register,” 1820, for two long accounts of this crime, 
saying, “One of them, Perry Hutton, a native of Delaware, formerly 
a well-known stage-driver, who lately broke jail at Richmond, where 
he had been committed for kidnapping. See, also, “ Scharf’s Balti- 
more Chronicles,” pp. 398, 399. 

$ “ Niles’s Register,” 1823. 


522 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Be still !” the woman cried, rising and walking, in her 
rolling gait, to watch things without that stirred her mind 
more than her lover’s recitation ; “ what good kin these 
tales do you, Captain ? My God ! the roads is full of 
people, and they are all looking yer. Is it at me, Van 
Dorn ?” 

He coughed painfully, still watching her, however, and 
answered : 

“ Only a quarter-race, I guess, dear Pat ! What ! are 
you fearing , at your time of life ?” 

“No,” cried Patty Cannon, defiantly, taking some- 
thing from her bosom ; “ here is the same dose I gave 
my husband, if the worst comes.” 

“ Bravo, Patty ! you only tarnish into age, like an old 
bronze, that is harder by time and oxidizing. I was a 
gentleman, and yet you mastered me. How strange to 
see us tqgether beleaguered here, myself by death, and 
you by the law ! Why, we have defied them both ! Let 
them come on ! Do you believe in everlasting fire ? — that 
every injury is a live coal to roast the soul? I know you 
do ; and, if you do, how beautiful your rosy grate will be, 
tough charmer, with boys spoiled in the bud, and husbands 
in the blossom, with families of freemen torn apart, and 
children, born free as the flag of their country, sent to 
perpetual bondage and the whip. Poca barba,poca ver- 
giienza /* Who but a woman could have put it into Will- 
iam Bouser’s head, when she had kidnapped him and 
thirty negroes more, and sold them all to Austin Wool- 
folk, in Baltimore, to rise at sea on Woolfolk’s vessel, and 
massacre the officers, only to be hanged at last, and all 
to make Woolfolk a better customer !” f 

“There are people all round the house, Van Dorn. I 
hear them on the stairs and in the rooms. Have mercy !” 


* Spanish proverb : “ Little beard, little shame.” 
t This case is related in the “Life of Benjamin Lundy. 


PLEASURE DRAINED. 


523 


“ Devils, or men, Patty ? Both are your courtiers, re- 
member, and perhaps they crowd each other. What do 
we care? Que contento estoy ! Perhaps I am indifferent 
because no blood is on my hands, vile slaver though I 
am ! Joe Johnson and his low-browed brother you could 
teach to kill ; me, nothing worse than to steal and fondle 
you. Patty, you believe in hell. I am a believer, too ; 
for I believe in heaven/’ 

“ O Van Dorn ; how you do talk !” 

“ Since you entrapped my. son, young Levin Dennis — 
chito ! quedito ! do not start, fair fiend — to have his father 
make another Johnson of him, I have discovered, through 
the little girl, the beauteous damsel now, Hulda Van 
Dorn, the sin you meant to spot me with ; and, listen, 
Patty ! it was my son, rich with his mother’s loyalty and 
love — dear guardian wife, that never shall learn of my 
ruin here, nor see me more ! — it was my Levin, set free 
by me, who gave the news at Dover and beat us back.” 

He had partly risen as he spoke, and the exertion 
seemed to choke him. The woman sat in dreadful si- 
lence, watching his veins rise upon his pale and wilful 
face. He caught at his throat with his fingers, and for 
a time could speak no more. 

“ Patty,” said he, at last, between his coughing spells, 
“ I believe again, for I have seen my wife, true as an an- 
gel, beauteous as a child, in prayer for me. An honest 
man waits my death to love her better, and be the father 
of my son. Hala 0 hala! I have had the daughter of 
my murdered friend to kiss and bless me, and to love my 
son. My son has given me his confidence, unknowing 
whom I was, and shown to me a brave, pure heart. Yd 
soy amado / Their prayers may knock for me at the eter- 
nal door. But thou, the murderer of my youth, no heart 
will pray for. Believe in hell, and die ; ha / hala ! ho f 
He pointed his white finger at her in an ecstasy, with 
a mocking smile in his blue eyes, like fading stars at 


5 2 4 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


dawn, and then the rosy morning flowed all round his 
mouth, as the bullet, detached in his emotion, fell towards 
the lung, and wakened hemorrhage, and to the last of his 
strength he pointed at her, and then fell back, in crimson 
linen, smiling yet in death. 

Terrified at the unwonted scene of a natural decease in 
that abode of violence, the mistress only sat, the image 
of paralysis, till her door slowly opened, and there en- 
tered, hand in hand, young Levin Dennis and Hulda Van 
Dorn. 

“ Levin,” the young girl said, composed as one to whom 
reputable life and obsequies were familiar, “ I have heard 
the dying sentences of this misled, strong, disappointed 
man. Let us kneel down, dear friend, and say a prayer. 
He was our father, Levin; not Van Dorn — that is my 
name, the daughter of his friend — but Captain Oden Den- 
nis, of the Ida privateer.” 

As they knelt, with closed eyes, the room slowly filled, 
and Patty Cannon’s arms were seized by two constables, 
and the warrant read to her. She heard it with humil- 
ity, making no answer but this : 

“ Once I had money an’ friends a plenty ; my money 
is gone, and so is my friends ; there’s no fight now in 
pore ole Patty Cannon.” 


Chapter XLIV. 

THE DEATH OF PATTY CANNON. 

As Patty Cannon came out of the tavern the cross- 
roads were full of people, taking their last look at the 
spot where she had triumphed for nearly twenty years. 

None thought to look at Van Dorn, nor ask what had 
become of him, and his friend Sorden removed his body, 
unseen, to a spot in the pine woods, where his unmarked 


THE DEATH OF PATTY CANNON. 525 

grave was dug, and standing round it were three mourn- 
ers only, and Sorden said the final words with homely 
tears : 

“ I loved him as I never loved A male.” 

The Maryland constable marched Patty Cannon down 
to the little bridge of planks where ran the ditch nearly 
on the State line, and tradition still believes the figment 
that joe Johnson at that moment was hiding beneath it. 

There, driven across the boundary like some border- 
er’s cow, the queen of the kidnappers was seized by the 
Delaware constable, and placed in a small country gig- 
wagon, and, followed by a large mounted posse, the road 
was taken to the little hamlet of Seaford, five miles dis- 
tant. 

She watched the small funereal cedars and monumental 
poplar-tree rise strangled from the underbrush, the dark- 
brown streams flowing into inky mill-ponds, the close, 
small pines, scarcely large enough to moan, but trying to 
do so in a baby tone, and her eyes turned to the sand, 
where she was soon to be. Not agony nor repentance 
nor any hope of escape fluttered her cold heart, but only 
a feeling of being ungratefully deserted by her friends, 
and ill-treated by her equals and neighbors, who had so 
seldom warned or avoided her ; no preacher had come 
to tell her the naked gospel, and some had bowed to her 
respectfully, and even begged her oats, and made sub- 
scriptions from her ill-gotten silver. 

Seaford was a sandy place upon a bluff of the Nanti- 
coke, and, as the procession came in, a party of survey- 
ors, working for Meshach Milburn’s railroad, paused to 
jeer the old kidnapper. She had grown suddenly old, 
and never raised her voice, that had always been so for- 
ward, to make a reply. 

The magistrate, Dr. John Gibbons, had been an edu- 
cated young Irishman who landed from a ship at Lewes, 
and, marrying a lady in Maryland, near Patty Cannon’s, 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


526 

became the legal spirit of the little town. His office, a 
mere cabin, on a corner by his house, being too small for 
the purpose, the examination was adjourned to the tavern, 
at the foot of the hill, near where a mill-pond brook dug 
its way to the Nanticoke. Around the tavern some box- 
bush walks were made in the sand, and willow-trees bor- 
dered the cold river-side, and, at pauses in the hearing, 
wild-fowl were heard to play and pipe in the falling tide. 

The evidence of Cy James and other cowardly com- 
panions in her sins was quickly given, and the procession 
started through the woods and sands to Georgetown, 
twelve miles to the eastward, where Patty Cannon was 
received by all the town, waiting up for her, and the jail 
immediately closed her in. 

****** * 

“I didn’t ezackly make out what that cymlin-headed 
feller did it fur,” Jimmy Phoebus remarked, in the hold 
of an old oyster pungy, where he found himself with his 
mulatto friend and Aunt Hominy and the children, “ but 
the file he fetched me has done its work at last. Yer, 
Whatcoat,” addressing his male fellow-prisoner, “ take 
this knife the same feller slipped me, an’ cut these cords.” 
Standing up free again, Mr. Phoebus further remarked, 
“Whatcoat, thar’s two of us yer. By smoke! thar’s 
three.” 

The docile colored man opened his eyes. 

“ Him !” exclaimed the sailor, indicating the feather- 
bed in the hold, with its stiff, invisible contents; “Joe’ll 
chuck him overboard down yer about deep water some- 
where. Now, for a little hokey-pokey ; I think I’ll git in 
thar myself, an’ let Joe sell t’other feller fur a nigger.” 

Phoebus’s power over his fellow-prisoners — little chil- 
dren and idiotic Hominy included — was now perfect, and 
he began to explore the rotten old hold, which contained 
oyster-rakes, fish-lines, and the usual utensils of a dredg- 
ing-vessel, and soon discovered that there could be made 


THE DEATH OF PATTY CANNON. ' 527 

a clear passage to crawl through her from forecastle to 
cabin by removing a few boards. 

u Yer, Hominy,” he said, “get to work with your nee- 
dle, old gal ; I’m goin’ to take you home.” 

* * * * * * * 
With a good start, and a fair wind and slack tide, 
Johnson was off Vienna at eight o’clock. 

“Ten mile to go, an’ they can’t catch me with a race- 
horse,” he said, “ after I pass Chicacomico wharf, an’ git 
abaft the marshes. I’m boozy fur sleep. Thar’s two in 
this crew I don’t know, and I must be helmsman. Bing- 
avast ! I’ll make my nigger work his passage.” 

He walked to the hatchway over the hold, and, sliding 
it back, dropped in, and, with a few expert blows of the 
professional smithy, set Whatcoat free, merely glancing 
where Phoebus lay upon his face, snoring hard. 

“Cool cucumber of a bloke,” Johnson said, “he’ll be 
too much fur me in a trade ; I’ll have to stifle him !” 
Then, ordering the mulatto man astern, Johnson gave 
him the tiller, and sat near, nodding, till the second 
wharf on the starboard was passed. 

“ Now Gabriel can’t overhaul me,” Johnson exclaimed; 
“ thar’s no more road on the Dorchester side, an’ the 
Somerset roads is all gashed by creeks an’ barred by 
farm-gates. I’ll sink that dab an’ stifly.” 

He called two deck hands, and lifted the body out of 
the hold. Phoebus still placidly slept upon his face, and 
Johnson looked at him with peculiar envy after a hurried 
glance at the dead. Some ropes being put around the 
bed, and drag-irons attached to them, the whole weight 
was unceremoniously thrown overboard at the point of 
Hungry Neck, and the dealer remarked, apologetically : 

“ There goes a great hypocrite, gentlemen ; he wasn’t 
above piracy, ef he could git another man to fly the black 
flag for him. I reckon he’ll be ‘conservative’ enough 
after this. And now I’ll snooze. Steer her for Ragged 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


528 

Point, yonder, Whatcoat, an’ when you git thar wake me. 
It’s clear broad inlet all the way ; an’ remember, nigger, 
I sleep and shoot on hair triggers !” 

With his pistols in his hand, Johnson lay down in the 
cabin a few feet from the helmsman, and tried to see 
and sleep at once. He had been without rest for many 
nights, and sleep soon bound him in its own clevis and 
manacles. 

When he awoke, so deep had been his slumber that he 
could not recall for a moment where he was. The tiller 
was unmanned, the stars shone in the cabin hatchway, a 
cold bilge-water draft blew through the old hulk, and, as 
he dragged himself up the steps, he saw tall woods near 
by, and heard the voice of solemn pines. 

The vessel was aground ; wild geese were making jubi- 
lant shrieks as they cut the water with their fleecy wings, 
like cameo engraving ; the outlaw gazed and gazed, and 
finally muttered : 

“Deil’s Island, or I’m a billy noodle ! I run from it 
the last time I was yer, an’ my blood runs cold to be yer 
agin ; my daddy got his curse from this camp-meetin’.” 

Taking speed from his apprehensions, Johnson slid 
back the hatchway and leaped into the hold, starlight 
and moonlight following him, and nothing did they reveal 
there except one man, peacefully sleeping upon his face, 
as 'Phoebus had last been seen. 

The kidnapper shook his captive, but he did not awa- 
ken. He turned the man over, and there met his eyes 
the cold blue stare and Roman nose and bleeding lips 
of Allan McLane, apparently returned from the bottom 
of the river. 

With a shriek, the outlaw bounded upon the deck and 
ran to the bow of the pungy. 

“ Help me !” came a faint cry from the forecastle, and, 
peeping in, Joe Johnson recognized one of his own famil- 
iars he had shipped at Cannon’s Ferry, gagged, like his 


THE DEATH OF PATTY CANNON. 529 

companion, and tied fast. The man had just been able 
to articulate. 

“ Now, spiflicate me !” spoke the skipper, relieving the 
man, “ the ruffian cly you ! who did this ?” 

“ The white nigger did it all, Joe. He crawled through 
the stays to the cabin, and got your pistols, first ; least- 
ways, we found him an’ the yaller feller at the helm on 
top of us, coming up the fo’castle, and next t’other two 
men jined ’em. They said ole Samson had give ’em the 
wink. We two was tied and throwed in yer, an’ ef you 
had awaked, thar was a man to stab you to the heart, sot 
over you.” 

“The portmanteau ?” cried Johnson. 

“ That’s gone, I reckon. They sowed you up a feather 
an’ oyster-shell man on a plank to heave overboard ; 
that’s what they said. They steered for Deil’s Island, 
an’ sot the Island Parson yer to watch that you don’t git 
the pungy off, an’ I reckon they’re half-way to Princess 
Anne.” 

Joe Johnson heard no more. He released his creat- 
ures from their bonds, took the. dead body in the pungy’s 
canoe, and gave the command : 

“ Row fur the open bay ! We’ll strike St. Mary’s Coun- 
ty or Virginny. Bingavast! Hike! Never agin will I 
put foot on this Eastern Shore.” 

At Georgetown Jimmy Phoebus, Samson, and Levin 
Dennis met again, and Levin told the mystery of his fa- 
ther’s disappearance. 

“ Never tell your mother, Levin, that Captain Dennis 
died in that Pangymonum ; it would break her heart, and 
she never would trust man agin.” 

“ Jimmy,” spoke up Samson, “ let her understand that 
he got wrecked on the Ida. It looks a little bad, but the 
slave-trade sounds better than kidnappin’.” 

“They say that Allan McLane owned that slave ves* 
34 


530 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


sel,” Phoebus put in; “but he didn’t live to know his 
loss. He’ll meet his heathens at the Judgment Seat.” 

“ Who has fed mother ?” Levin asked. “ Hulda can’t 
explain that.” 

“ I kin, Levin,” Samson Hat said, bashfully. “ It was 
me. Good ole Meshach Milburn, that everybody’s down 
on, pitied that pore woman, an’ made me set things she 
needed in her window. He said if I ever told it he’d 
discharge me.” 

“Dog my skin !” Jimmy Phoebus observed, “the next 
man that calls 1 steeple top ’ after ole Meshach I’ll mash 
flat ! But, come, my son, I’ve buried at Broad Creek your 
wife’s family relics. We’ll hire a wagon, and drive to ole 
Broad Creek ’piscopal church on the way, and there I’ll 
have you married to Huldy.” 

The sword-hilt and coins were disinterred, and in that 
ancient edifice of hard pine, where the worship of her 
English race had long been celebrated, the naval officer’s 
daughter became the wife of the son of his voluptuous and 
perverted friend. As Jimmy Phoebus kissed them he said : 

“ Levin, when your mother says ‘ Yes,’ all four of us 
will settle in the West. Illinois has become a free state, 
after a hard fight, and I reckon that’ll suit us.” 

* * Ht * * * * 

For a while Patty Cannon, by her affability and sor- 
row, had easy times in jail, and was allowed to eat with 
the jailer’s family ; but, as the examination proceeded 
before the grand jury, and her menials hastened to throw 
their responsibility in so many crimes upon her alone, an 
outer opinion demanded that she be treated more harsh- 
ly, and some of the irons she had manacled upon her 
captives were riveted upon her own ankles. Very soon 
dropsy began to appear in her legs and feet, and, after 
it became evident to her that neither money nor friends 
were forthcoming in her defence, she fell into a passive 
despair. 


THE DEATH OF PATTY CANNON. 53 1 

The frequent conferences between Jimmy Phoebus and 
Cy James led to the belief that not only had Hulda re- 
covered portions of her father’s money and valuables, 
hidden in the beehives and flowerpots old Patty had so 
assiduously attended, but that Phoebus had seized upon 
property indicated by the informer, and was to have what- 
ever remained of it after procuring the latter’s release. 

This result was hastened by Patty Cannon’s death, 
which happened, to the great relief of many respectably 
considered people in that region, who had feared from the 
first that she would make a minute confession, implicating 
everybody who had dealt with her band. 

Among these was Judge Custis, who opened his skel- 
eton-in-the-closet to John M. Clayton one spring-like 
day. Clayton had quietly prodded on the conviction of 
Patty Cannon, but the jealousy of the slaveholding in- 
terest made him wary of any open appearance against 
her. 

They were sitting in the little parlor of the Methodist 
parsonage, a small frame house with a conical-roofed 
portico and big end-chimney, a little off* from the public 
square, whither they had gone to send the pastor to wait 
on the aged Chancellor, who had been taken ill in the 
court-room, and lay in the hotel. 

“ Clayton,” said Judge Custis, in a low tone of voice, 
“ what this woman may do or tell, you would not think 
concerned me, but I will show you how deep her influ- 
ence has reached, as well as explain to you why I would 
not pursue my own servants to her den. In this I hu- 
miliate myself before you, as I must do, if I am to be- 
come your client.” 

“ You had been trading with Patty Cannon ; I guessed 
that much.” 

“ Such was the case. When I was a collegian at Yale, 
returning home one holiday, I fell in love with a beauti- 
ful quadroon, the property of my uncle, in Northampton 


532 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


County. She was an elegant woman, with a good educa- 
tion, and had been my playmate. I was ardent and 
good-looking, and easily found lodgment in her heart ; 
but the conquest of her charms was long, and agonizing 
with sincere esteem. You must believe me when I de- 
clare that I fell dangerously ill because I was refused 
by her, and, making a confidant of my doctor, he told 
the girl that she must choose between my death and her 
surrender. Pity, then, prevailed, even over religion. I 
was happy in every point but one — the injury conceal- 
ment worked upon her self-respect ; for, Clayton, my mis- 
tress was my own cousin.” 

“Goy!” 

“I never desired to marry, although no children had 
been born in my patriarchal relation ; but, in the course 
of years, my uncle became pressed for debts, and he ap- 
pealed to me to save my beautiful handmaiden from sale, 
he being in full sympathy with my relation to her, because 
she was his daughter.” 

“ I goy 1” 

“ The case was urgent. I possessed some negroes, the 
legacy of my mother. To sell them publicly would be a 
stigma both upon my humanity and my credit. I adopted 
the cowardly device of letting a kidnapper slip them away, 
and take a large commission for his trouble. I saved my 
lady, but at the expense of a secret.” 

“And that secret Joe Johnson depended on, Custis, 
when he was suddenly driven into your house, and found 
your old servant already demoralized by the announce- 
ment of your son-in-law ?” 

“ The scoundrel pressed his advantage ; and he saw, 
besides, my daughter — not Vesta, but her half-sister, Vir- 
gie — and, between his persecution of her and my brother- 
in-law's vindictiveness, poor Virgie was literally run to 
the ground and into it ; she is in her grave.” 

Judge Custis broke into a long fit of sobbing, and Clay- 


THE DEATH OF PATTY CANNON. 533 

ton, who had noticed his dejected mien since their sepa- 
ration, passed an arm around him, saying : 

“Never mind, now! Never mind, old friend ! John- 
son is fled ; McLane, they whisper, has never been seen 
since he entered Johnson’s tavern. His will was found 
there, and your daughter gets her mother’s property and 
servants back.” 

“I must finish my story,” Judge Custis said, stanching 
his tears. “ By the decline of every family with natural 
feelings and refinement, under what Mr. Pinkney termed 
4 the contaminating curse of reluctant bondsmen,’ we, 
also, became poor. To save others, it was necessary 
that I must marry, and get money by my own prostitu- 
tion. My God, how we are repaid ! A bride was found 
for me in Baltimore, the sister of Allan McLane, and a 
beauty. 

“ I began my married life with the best intentions • 
my poor mistress herself advised me to turn to my wife, 
and become a true man. She told me so with her heart 
breaking. In heaven, where she dwells with my poor 
child, she hears me now, and knows I speak the truth !” 

Judge Custis broke down again, and leaned his con- 
vulsed head on Clayton’s tender breast, whose own wid- 
ower’s grief gushed forth responsively. 

“ Children were born in Teackle Hall ; my servitude 
was becoming adjusted to me, when Allan McLane, in 
his love of vindictiveness and of low, formal respectabil- 
ity, conceived that my poor quadroon required some chas- 
tisement for having been his sister’s rival, and he set a 
trap to buy her. I was forced to have her bought, to pro- 
tect her, and to bring her to my care again, and thus our 
passion was revived, and, giving birth to Virgie, she died. 
Reared together, and unconscious of their kindred, those 
daughters loved each other as dearly as when, in heaven, 
they shall hide in the radiance of each other, and cover 
my sins with their angelic wings.” 


534 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Rise up, old friend !” cried Clayton ; “your transgres- 
sions are, at least, washed out in sincere tears. Hear the 
birds all around us loving and condoning, and filling the 
air with praise. Come out !” 

As they stepped upon Georgetown Square they saw John 
Randel, Jr., leading a party of surveyors to locate the op- 
position railroad to Meshach Milburn’s. These and many 
others were pressing towards the whipping-post and pil- 
lory, in the rear of the court-house, where stood, exposed 
by the sheriff, the cleanly mulatto woman who had enter- 
tained Virgie in Snow Hill the first night of her flight. 

“This free woman, Priscilla Hudson,” cried the sher- 
iff, “ is to stand one hour in the pillory for the crime of 
lending her pass to a slave. Thirty lashes she was sen- 
tenced to, the Governor has graciously taken off. She is 
to be sold, out of the state, at the end of one hour, for the 
term of her natural life, to the highest bidder.” 

The poor woman stood there, bare armed and bare 
almost to the bosom, delicate and lovely to see, and the 
mother of free children, her clothing having been partly 
removed before the pardon of the stripes was announced 
to her. 

Her head and arms were thrust through the holes in 
one leaf of the pillory, and thus, thrown forward, her 
modesty was exposed to the wanton gaze of the crowd, 
while, on The other side of the same elevated platform, 
pilloried in like manner, was a female chicken-thief, im- 
pudent, indifferent, and chewing tobacco, and spitting it 
out upon the pillory floor. 

As Clayton and Custis saw this scene on their way to 
the tavern, an egg, thrown from a window of the debt- 
or’s jail, whether meant for Mrs. Hudson or not, struck 
her in the face, and its corrupt contents streamed down 
her white and shivering breast. 

“ Shame ! shame !” cried the people, as they saw the 
woman cry, and, gazing up to the jail window, an- 


THE DEATH OF PATTY CANNON. 535 

other female face appearing there, turned their cries to 
curses : 

“ Hang her ! hang her !” 

For the last time in life Patty Cannon’s bold and 
comely face swelled again with passionate blood to 
the roots of the glossy black hair, and the few who saw 
her rich, dark eyes, inflamed with anger, say their pu- 
pils were dilated like, the wild-cat’s. She was gone in 
a moment, and the sheriff had wiped Mrs. Hudson’s face 
and breast with a handkerchief passed up by a colored 
woman. 

Two men were now actively going around the crowd, 
hat in hand, soliciting contributions to buy the woman, 
the first a blind man, whose eyes were bandaged, and a 
white man led him, calling loudly : 

“The abolitionists have raised three hundred dollars 
to buy this woman’s freedom. We want a hundred more, 
as some mean people may bid her up high. This man, 
her husband, stole her pass, to slip a friend away. We 
couldn’t git the evidence in, but it’s God’s truth, gentle- 
men ! The woman’s nursed my wife, an’ done a heap of 
good ; and she come here, of her own free will, out of 
Maryland, to nurse the Chancellor.” 

Little money was raised in that crowd, since there was 
little to give, and, addressing the two distinguished stran- 
gers, Sorden, the crier, exclaimed : 

“ What, gentlemen, will you let the Hunn brothers and 
Tommy Garrett and the Motts give three hundred dollars 
for a woman they never saw, and we, who see her always 
doing good, give nothing ?” 

“ Pity ! pity !” sobbed the blind man. “ I’m burned so 
bad nobody will buy me , but I stole her pass to help a 
slave off that I fell in love with.” 

Judge Custis left Clayton’s side, and waited till the 
hour in the pillory was done, and, after a fierce contest, 
saw Sorden come off victorious at the sale, though it took 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


536 

every dollar the Judge could raise in Georgetown on his 
private credit. 

“ What is the name of the girl you gave her pass to ?” 
asked the Judge of the blind mulatto. 

“Virgie, marster.” 

“My heart told me so,” exclaimed the Judge. “Your 
crime has been punished enough. I will send you to your 
wife.”* 

* * * * * * * 

John Randel, Jr., observed, that evening: 

“Devil Jim Clark has taken example from Patty Can- 
non, and squared the circle.” 

“Not dead?” asked Clayton. 

“Yes, dead and buried. He was cleaning up his con- 
tract on the canal, and mistook the white Irish laborers 
there for kidnapped niggers. They set on him, and beat 
him and scared him together, so that he never recov- 
ered. They say he was ‘ converted ’ on his death-bed ; 
or, as the saying is, ‘ he died triumphantly / but the dar- 
keys report that the devil came straight down with a char- 
iot and drove him off.” 

“ That fellow, Whitecar, I’m reserving,” said Clayton, 
“to punish when I can use him to sustain an argument 
in favor of admitting negro testimony in kidnapping 
cases.f Without that admission, these kidnappers can- 
not be convicted : even Patty Cannon here may escape 
us, though she has killed white men.” 

Sorden spoke up, he being of the party : 

“ A disease called leprosy has broke out in ole Derrick 
Molleston’s cabin ; Sam Ogg has got it, too, and they say 
he fetched it up from the breakwater. Nobody will go 
near them. Black Dave is dead ; he said he killed a 
man at Prencess Anne : the young wife of Levin Dennis, 

* A case actually like this, happening twenty-five years later, was 
related to me by Judge George P. Fisher, of Dover. 

t See the case of Whitecar in the Delaware reports. 


THE DEATH OF PATTY CANNON. 


537 

who turns out to be a lady, stayed and prayed with him 
to the last, and he went off humble and happy. But, my 
skin ! another kidnapper has rented Johnson’s tavern 
a’ready.” 

“The railroad will clear all these evils out,” exclaimed 
Randel. “ I’ve put it into poetry,” and he began to recite : 

“ To dark Naswaddox forest fled 
The murderer from the main, 

And with the otter laid his head 
Amid the swamp and cane : 

‘ Here nothing can pursue my ear, 

From travelled paths astray; 

I shall forget, from year to year, 

The world beyond the bay !’ 

“ The hunted man one morning heard 
A whistle near and strong, 

And in the night a fiery light 
The thickets flashed among : 

The demon of the engine rushed 
Along on blazing beams — 

The hound the murderer had flushed, 

The outlaw’s path was Steam’s !” 

######* 
The cry of hate from the crowd around the whipping 
post, as it awoke Patty Cannon’s last anger, also deter 
mined her last crime. 

Fear was relative in her : she had neither the fear of 
men nor of shame, and only of death as it involved a 
hereafter. Whether that hereafter was a latent convic- 
tion in her mind, or the vivid admonition of guilt and 
dead men’s eyes peering over her dreams and into the si- 
lent, lonely watches of haunted midnights, who shall tell ? 
There is no analysis of a native and ancient depravity : 
it was sown in the marrow, it strengthens in the bone, 
and, with a cunning, daring self-assertion, gambles upon 
the faith of living and of dying not. Its very fears push 
it onward in crime, and make it cruelly tantalize its 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


538 

own fate, as cowards lean over graveyard walls, and shout, 
with an inner trembling, “Come forth — I dare you!” 

So had this woman, conscious of her deserts, bullied 
eternal justice through its long postponements, never 
doubting, while ever vexing, the Spirit of God, until the 
number of her crimes crowded the tablet of her memory, 
and out of the hideous gulf of her past life gazed faces 
without names and deeds without memoranda ; a proces- 
sion the longer that strangers were in it, and, shrinking 
from her, yet pressing on, exclaimed her name or only 
shrieked “ Tis she !” as if her name was nothing to her 
curse. 

Sleeping in her chains, there were children’s eyes 
watching her from far-off corners, as if to say, “ Give us 
the whole life we would have lived but for you !” 

As her swollen limbs festered to the irons, there were 
babies’ cries floating in the air, that seemed to draw near 
her breasts, as if for food, and suddenly convulse there in 
screams of pain, and move away with the sounds of suffo- 
cation she had heard as they expired. 

All night there were callers on her, and whom they 
were no one could tell ; but the jailer’s family saw her 
lips moving and her eyes consult the air, as if she was 
faintly trying bravado upon certain business -speaking 
ghosts who had come with bills long overdue and de- 
manded payment, and went out only to come again and 
again. 

Some of these mystic visitors she would jeer at and 
defy, and stamp her feet, as if they had no rights in equity 
against her soul, having been on vicious errands when 
they met their ends, and bankrupts in the court of pity ; 
but suddenly a helpless something would appear, and par- 
alyze her with its little wail, like a babeless mother or a 
motherless babe, and, with her forehead wet with sweat 
of agony, she would affect to chuckle, and would whisper t 
“ Nothin’ but niggers ! nothin’ more !” 


THE DEATH OF PATTY CANNON. 539 

Day brought her some relief, but also other cares, and 
of these the chief was the care of money. She had been 
a spendthrift all her life, and robbed mankind of life and 
liberty to enjoy the selfish dissipation of spending their 
blood-money ; and what had she bought with it ? Noth- 
ing, nothing. To spend it, only, she had wrecked her sex 
and her soul ; to spend it for such trifles as children 
want — candy and common ornaments, a dance and a 
treat, a gift for some boor or forester or even negro she 
was misleading, or to establish a silly reputation for gen- 
erosity: generous at the expense of human happiness, 
and of robbing people of liberty and life, merely for 
spending-money ! 

Now she had none to appease the all-devouring greeds 
of habit intensified by real necessity : no money to buy 
dainties or even liquor; no money to spend upon the 
jailer’s family and keep the reputation of kindness alive; 
no money for decent apparel to appear in court ; none 
to corrupt the law or to hire witnesses and attorneys. 

The two demons she had created alternately seized 
the day and the night : the demon of money plagued her 
all day, the demon of murder pursued her all night. 

Every morning she had insatiate wants ; all night she 
had remorseless visitors ; and, close before, the gallows 
filled the view, with the Devil tying the noose. 

That Devil she plainly saw, so busy on the gallows, fit- 
ting his ropes and shrouds and long death-caps, and he 
evaded her, as if he had no commerce with her now. 

He was a cool and wistful man, perfectly happy in the 
prospect of getting her, and not anxious about it, so sure 
was he of her soon and complete possession. 

He was always out in the jail-yard when she looked 
there, fixing his ropes, sliding the nooses, examining the 
gallows, like a conscientious carpenter ; and in his com- 
placent smile was an awful terror that froze her dumb : 
he seemed so impersonal, so joyous, so industrious, as if 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


540 

he had waited for her like a long creditor, and compound 
ed the interest on her sins till the infernal sum made him 
a millionaire in torments. 

A Devil it was, real as a man — a slavemaster to whose 
quiet love of cruelty eternal death was not enough ; a 
man whose unscarred age, old as the rising sun, still came 
and went in immortal youthfulness and satisfaction, but 
for the nonce forgetting other debtors in the grip he had 
on her, as his majestic expiation for his own shortcom- 
ings. 

He looked like a storekeeper, a man of accounts, a 
cosmopolitan kidnapper, who knew a good article and 
had it now. She was so terrified that she wanted to cry 
to him, and see if he would not-remit that business meth- 
od and become more human, and sauce her back. 

But no ; the longer she watched, the less he looked 
towards her, though she knew his smile meant no one 
else. To hang upon his cord was very little ; to go with 
him after it was stretched, down the burning grates of 
hell, and see him all so cool and busy in her misery, was 
the gnawing vulture at her heart. 

In vain she tried to throw responsibility for her sins 
upon a vague, false parentage and fatherhood, and say 
that she was bred to robbery and vice ; a something in 
her heart responded : “ No, you had beauty and health 
and chaste lovers whom you rejected or tempted, and a 
mind that was ever clear and knew right from wrong. 
Conscience never gave you up, though drenched in inno- 
cent blood. The often-murdered monitor revived and 
cried aloud like the striking of a clock, but never was 
obeyed !” 

Thus haunted, deserted, peeped in upon from the here- 
after, racked with vain needs, her outlets closed to every 
escape or subterfuge, revenge itself dead, and disease as- 
sisting conscience to banish sleep, the wretched woman 
crawled to her window one day and saw the helpless effi- 


THE DEATH OF PATTY CANNON. 541 

gy of her sex exposed there for doing an act of humanity ; 
and instantly an instinct she immediately obeyed exacted 
from her one last familiar, heartless deed, to show the 
crowd that even she, Patty Cannon the murderess, had 
“no respect for a nigger.” 

That doctrine long survived her, though she found it 
old when she came among them. 

She aimed an egg at the breast of her sex, and, with 
a barefaced grin, she saw it strike and burst. The next 
moment the crowd had recognized and defied her. 

In the exasperation of their shout, and of being no 
longer praised even for insulting a negro, a convulsion of 
desperate rage overcame the murderess. 

Too helpless to retort in any other way, yet in uncon- 
trollable recklessness, she exclaimed, “ They never shall 
see me hang, then !” and swallowed the arsenic she had 
concealed in her bosom. 

That night she died in awful torments. 
******* 

The venerable Chancellor, lying in the hotel near the 
whipping-post corner, watched by the released Mrs. Hud- 
son, who must to-morrow depart from the state forever, 
heard that night voices on the square, saying : 

“ Patty Cannon’s dead. They say she’s took poison.” 

A mighty pain seized the Chancellor’s heart, and the 
loud groans he made called a stranger into the room. 

“ Is that dreadful woman dead ?” sighed the Chan- 
cellor. 

“ Yes ; she will never plague Delaware again, mars- 
ter.” 

“God be thanked!” the old man groaned. “Justice 
and murder are kin no more.” 

They said he died that instant of heart disease. 


54 2 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


Chapter XLV. 

THE JUDGE REMARRIED. 

Vesta found her circle reunited, though with many ab- 
sentees, at Princess Anne. 

Aunt Hominy took her place in the kitchen, and cooked 
with all her former art, but her voice and understanding 
were gone, and she never would go past the Entailed 
Hat, and still regarded it, as nearly as could be made out, 
as the cause of all her errors and dangers, though she 
seemed to admit its unevadable dominion. 

The poor woman, Mary, finding Samson Hat, in time, 
wishing to have a partner in the old storehouse, where 
he had become the only resident, had faith enough left to 
make her third marriage with him ; and his means not 
only made good the property she had lost, but the hale 
old man presented her with a babe boy, which took the 
name of Meshach Phoebus, and on which Judge Custis 
sagely remarked that it “ ought to have been a red-head- 
ed nigger, having both the fiery furnace and the blazing 
sun in its name.” 

On Samson Hat’s death, which resulted from rheuma- 
tism reaching his heart, his widow joined her deliverer 
from slavery, James Phoebus, in the West, where he lived 
happily with his bride and stepson, and often wrote home 
of a friend he had there named Abe Lincoln, who made 
flat-boat voyages with him down the Mississippi. Both 
Ellenora Phoebus and Hulda Dennis reared Western fam- 
ilies which played effective parts in the drama of civiliza- 
tion. 

Vesta lost no time in setting free every slave about 
Teackle Hall and on the farms, with the approval of her 


THE JUDGE REMARRIED. 


543 


father and husband also, and Roxy became the wife of 
Whatcoat, the rescued freedman, and the replacer, at her 
mistress’s side, of poor Virgie, whose body was brought 
home and interred by the church where she had been 
her white sister’s bridesmaid. The grief of Vesta for 
Virgie was quiet, but long, and as that of an equal, not 
a mistress, though she may have never known how equal. 

In the fatalities thronging about her marriage Vesta 
observed one signal blessing — the complete reform of her 
father’s habits. 

He drank nothing whatever, supplying with fruit the 
pleasures of wine, and with exercise and business, on her 
husband’s behests, the vagrant tours he once made in the 
forest for politics and amours. 

Aware of his sociable and voluptuous nature, Vesta 
desired to see him married again, to complete and secure 
his reformation ; and, while she was yet puzzling her brain 
to think of a wife to suit him, he solved the problem him- 
self by cleanly cutting out Rhoda Holland from under the 
attentions of William Tilghman. 

Rhoda had rapidly learned, and had corrected her gram- 
mar without losing her humor and her taste for dress, and 
her free, warm spirits soon made her an elegant woman, 
in whom, fortunately or unfortunately, a very decided 
worldly ambition germinated, — at once the proof and the 
vindication of parvenues . ^ 

She may have patterned it upon her uncle, or it may 
have emanated from his ambitious family stock, which, in 
and around him, had wakened to the vigor of a previous 
century; but it was so different from Vesta’s nature that, 
while it but made nobler her soul of tranquil piety and 
ease of ladyhood, Vesta was interested in Rhoda’s self-will 
and business coquetry. 

A higher vitality than Vesta’s, Rhoda Holland soon 
showed, in the superficial senses, more acuteness of sight 
and insight, quicker intuitions, more self-love, though not 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


544 

selfishness, less scrupulousness, perhaps, in dealing with 
her lovers, and, with fidelity and virtue, a pushing spirit 
that Vesta only mildly reproved, since she made the al- 
lowance that it was in part inspired by herself. 

“ Take care, dear,” Vesta said one day, “that you grow 
not away from your heart. With all improving, there is 
a growth that begets the heart disease. Do you love 
cousin William Tilghman ? He is too true a man to be 
hurt in his feelings. Nothing in this world, Rhoda, is a 
substitute for principle in woman.” 

“ I don’t want to lose principle, auntie,” Rhoda said ; 
“ but I am afraid I love life too much to be a pastor’s wife. 
I never saw the world for so long that I’m wild in it. I 
want to go, to look, and to see, everywhere. I feel my 
heart is in my wings, and must I go sit on a nest ? Miss 
Somers — ” 

“ The question is, dear, do you love ?” 

“Auntie, I reckon I love William as much as he does 
me.” 

“ But he is devoted, Rhoda. ” 

“ If I thought I had the whole, full heart of William, 
Aunt Vesta, and it would give him real pain to disap- 
point him, I would marry him. But I have watched him 
like a cat watches a mouse. He wants to marry me to 
make other people than himself happy ; to reconcile you 
and uncle more ; to take uncle more into your family by 
marrying his niece. William is trying to love Uncle Me- 
shach like a good Christian, but, Aunt Vesta, he thinks 
more of your little toe than of my whole body.” 

The crimson color came to Vesta’s cheeks so unwilling- 
ly, so mountingly, that she felt ashamed of it, and, in place 
of anger, that many wives so exposed would have shown, 
she shed some quiet tears. 

“ Rhoda, don’t you know I am your uncle’s wife.” 

Rhoda threw her arms around her. 

“ Forgive me, dear ! When you tell me, Aunt Vesta, 


THE JUDGE REMARRIED. 


545 

that William loves me dearly, I’ll gladly marry him. I 
only want, auntie, not to make happiness impossible, 
when to wait would be better.” 

Vesta wondered what Rhoda meant, but, kissing her 
friend tenderly again, Rhoda whispered : 

“ Auntie, it’s not selfishness that makes me behave so. 
Indeed, I love William ; it’s a sacrifice to let him go.” 

Vesta looked up and found Rhoda’s eyes this time full 
of tears. 

“Strange, tender girl!” cried Vesta. “What makes 
you cry?” 

Yet, for some unspoken, perhaps unknown, reasons, they 
both shed together the tears of a deeper respect for each 
other. 

Soon afterwards Judge Custis, being sent to Annapo- 
lis by Milburn, was requested to take Rhoda along, as a 
part of her education, and Vesta went, also, at her hus- 
band’s desire. 

She feared that her father, devoted as he had become 
to her husband’s business interests, still disliked him and 
bore him resentment; and Vesta wished to see not only 
outward but inward reconcilement of those two men, from 
one of whom she drew her being, and towards the other 
began to feel sacred yet awful ties that took hold on life 
and death. 

They were taken to the landing by Mr. Milburn and 
the young rector, and there, as the steamboat approached, 
Tilghman said : 

“ Rhoda, your uncle has consented. He wishes us to 
marry. I ask you, before all of them, to consider my pro- 
posal while you are gone, and come home with your reply.” 

The impetuous girl threw her arms around him and 
kissed him in silence, and, covering her face with her veil, 
awaited in uncontrollable tears the steamboat that was to 
carry her to the mightier world she had never seen, be- 
yond the bay. 


35 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


546 

After she reached the steamer her stillness and grief 
continued, and going to bed that night she turned up her 
face, discolored by tears, for Vesta to kiss her, like a child, 
and faltered : 

“ Aunty, don’t think I have no principle. Indeed, I 
have some.” 

******* 

Annapolis, half a century the senior of Baltimore, and 
the first town to take root in all the Chesapeake land, 
was now almost one hundred and fifty years old, and the 
stern monument of Cromwell’s protectorate. Its handful 
of expelled Puritans from Virginia, compelled to organize 
their county under the name of the Romanist, Anne Arun- 
del, unfurled the standard of the Commonwealth, red- 
dened with a tyrant king’s blood, against the invading 
army of Lord Baltimore, and, shouting “ God is our 
strength : fall on, men !” annihilated feudal Maryland, 
never to revive ; and, after King William’s similar revo- 
lution in England, “ Providence town” took his queen 
sister’s name, Annapolis, like Princess Anne across the 
bay. 

Annapolis became a place of fashion and of court, with 
horse-races, stage-playing, a press, a club, fox-hunting 
clergymen, a grand state-house, the town residences of 
planters, the belles of Maryland, and the seat of war 
against the French, the British crown, and the slavehold- 
ers’ insurrection. 

It was now in a state of comfortable decline, having 
yielded to Baltimore and to Washington its once superior 
influence and society ; but a lobby, the first in magnitude 
ever seen in this province, had assembled in the name of 
canals and railroads to compete for the bonded aid of 
the Legislature, and Judge Custis was leading the forlorn 
hope of the Eastern Shore for some of the subsidy so lib- 
erally showered upon the cormorant, Baltimore. 

Judge Custis was instructed to lobby at Annapolis for 


THE JUDGE REMARRIED. 


547 


one million dollars, or only one-eighth part of the grants 
made by the state, and he was to draw on Meshach Mil- 
burn for funds, who, meantime, continued out of his pri- 
vate resources to grade and buy right of way for one hun- 
dred and thirty miles of railroad. 

The adventure was gigantic for the private capital of 
that day, and the unpopularity of the adventurer at home 
was soon testified at the state capital. 

Vesta, whose carriage had been brought over, looked 
with a gentle patriotism — being herself of divided Mary- 
land and Virginia sympathies — upon the little peninsu- 
lated capital, with its old roomy houses of colonial brick, 
its circles and triangles in the public ways, and the un- 
changed names of such streets as King George, Prince 
George, and the Duke of Gloucester ; but Rhoda was ex- 
cited to the height of state pride in everything she saw, 
and, with strong faculty, seized on the historical and po- 
litical relations of Annapolis, till Judge Custis said : 

“Vesta, that girl is of the old rebel Milburne stock, I 
know. She takes it all in like a wild duck diving for the 
bay celery.” 

With two such beautiful women to speak for it, the 
Eastern Shore railroad seemed at first to have many 
friends, but it was not in the nature of the enterprising 
elements about Baltimore to yield a point, however com- 
plaisant they might appear. 

Vesta did not go into general company, but her influ- 
ence was mildly exercised in her rooms at the large old 
hotel, and in her carriage as she made excursions in pleas- 
ant weather to the South and West rivers, to “ the Forest ” 
of Prince George and to the thrifty Quakers of Mont- 
gomery. She wrote and received a daily letter, her hus- 
band being attentive and tender, despite his growing cares, 
as he had promised to be on that severe day he made his 
suit to her. 

But the story of her sacrifice, shamefully exaggerated, 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


548 

with all that intensity of expression habitual in a pro- 
slavery society whenever money is the stake and denun- 
ciation the game, was used to injure her husband’s inter- 
ests. 

Mr. Milburn was described as a vile Yankee type of 
miser and overreacher, who had plotted against the fort- 
une of a gentleman and the virtue of his daughter for a 
long series of remorseless years. 

Local opposition affirmed that he would use the rail- 
road to ruin other gentry and oppress his native region, 
and that he was a Philadelphia emissary and an aboli- 
tionist, scheming to create a new state of the three juris- 
dictions across the bay. 

Judge Custis, with his great popularity, did not escape 
censure ; he was said to have winked at the surrender of 
his child for money and ambition, and to have broken the 
heart of his estimable wife after he had lost her fortune 
in an iron furnace. 

Senator Clayton, whose mother had originated near 
Annapolis, made a visit there from Washington, and 
was entrapped into saying that Delaware would furnish 
all needful railway facilities for the Eastern Shore, and 
that two railways there would never pay. 

Finally, Judge Custis wrote to his son-in-law to come 
to Annapolis and meet these misstatements in person. 

Milburn came, and his pride being irritated by the nat- 
ure of the opposition, he wore to the scene of the combat 
his ancestral hat. 

He became at once the most marked figure in Mary- 
land. 

In one end of the state he was caricatured in drawings 
and verses as the generic Eastern-Shore man, wearing 
such a hat because he had not heard of any later 
styles. 

The connection of a man of last century’s hat with 
such a progressive thing as a railroad, seemed to excite 


THE JUDGE REMARRIED. 


549 


everybody’s risibilities. His railroad was called the Hat 
Line, even in the debates, and coarse people and negroes 
were hired by wits in the lobby to attend the Legislature 
with petitions for the Eastern Shore railroad, the whole 
delegation wearing antique and preposterous hats, gath- 
ered up from all the old counties and from the slop-shops 
of Baltimore ; and in that day queer hats were very com- 
mon, as animal skins of great endurance were still used 
to manufacture them.* 

From Somerset word was sent that Milburn retained 
his hat from no amiable weakness or eccentricity, but 
because he had entered a vow never to abandon it till he 
had put every superior he had under his feet ; and that 
he was a victim of gross forest superstition, and had made 
a bargain with the devil, who allowed him to prosper as 
long as he braved society with this tile. 

The hotel servants chuckled as he went in and out ; 
the oystermen and wood-cutters called jocosely to each 
other as he passed by ; respectable people said he could 
have no consideration for his wife to degrade her by 
raising the derision of the town. Judge Custis finally re- 
marked : 

“Milburn, I resolved, many years ago, never to ad- 
dress you again on the subject of your dress. My duty 
makes me break the resolve : your hat is the worst ene- 
my of your railroad.” 

* I take the following note from the New York Tribune of Decem- 
ber, 1882 : “The town of Richmond, Ind., is said to be the centre 
of Quakerdom in this country, and has five meetings in the two 
creeds of Fox and Hicks, and the Earlham Quaker College. There 
I saw the large, fur-covered white hats, a few of which are still left, 
which were imported into Indiana by the North Carolina Quakers 
from ‘ Beard’s Hatter Shop,’ an extinct locality in the North State, 
where the Quakers were prolific, and they all ordered these marvel- 
lous hats, which are said to be literally entailed , , being incapable of 
wearing out, and as good for the grandson as for the pioneer. Thej; 
are made of beaver-skin or its imitation in some other fur.” 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


550 

Vesta, however, was the Entailed Hat’s greatest victim. 
It lay upon her spirits like a shroud. Nervous and ap- 
prehensive as she had become, the perpetual admonition 
and friction of this article drove her into silence and 
gloom, poisoned the air and blocked up the sunlight, 
made going forth a constant running of the gantlet, and 
hospitality a comedy, and human observation a wondering 
stare. 

The hat was the silent, unindicated thing that stood 
between her and her husband and the rest of the world. 
She never mentioned it, for she saw that it was forbidden 
ground. Kind and liberal as her husband was in every 
other thing, she dared not allude to a matter which had 
become the centre of his nervous organization, like an in- 
durated sore ; and yet she saw, from other than selfish 
considerations, that this hat was his own worst foe. 

Some positive vice — and he had none — some calcu- 
lating conspiracy — and he was direct as the day — some 
base amusement or hidden habit or acrid disease would 
hold him in captivity and pervert his heart less than this 
simple aberration of behavior. Had he been a hunch- 
back men would have overlooked it ; a hideous goitre or 
wen they would not have resented ; but extreme gentility 
or highbred courtesy could not refrain from turning to 
look a second time at a man with a beautiful lady on his 
arm and a steeple hat upon his head. 

The existence of any subject man and wife must not 
talk together upon, which is yet a daily ingredient of com- 
fort and display, itself disarranges their economy and 
finally becomes the chronic intruder of their household ; 
and, when it is a trifle, it seems the more an obstacle, be- 
cause there is no reasoning about it. 

This Hat had long ceased to be external : it was worn 
on Milburn’s heart and stifled the healthy throbbing there. 
It made two men of him, — the outer and the household 
man, — and, like the Corsican brothers, they were ever con- 


THE JUDGE REMARRIED. 55 1 

scious of each other, and a word to one aroused the oth- 
er’s clairvoyant sensibility. 

“ If people would only not observe him,” Vesta said, 
“ I think he would lay his hat aside ; but that is impos- 
sible, and all his pride is in the unending conflict with a 
law of everlasting society. Who sets a fashion, we do not 
know ; who dares to set one that is obsolete must be a 
martyr ; independence no one can practise but a lunatic. 
Oh, what tyranny exists that no laws can reach, and how 
much of society is mere formality !” 

Vesta pitied her husband, but the disease was beyond 
her cure. She had anticipated some compensation for 
her marriage, in a larger life and society, and in the exer- 
cise of her mind, especially in art and music ; yet these 
were purely social things with woman, and the baneful 
hat was ever darkening her threshold and closing the 
vista of every other one. She meditated escaping from 
it by a visit to Europe, which her father had promised her 
before his embarrassments, and which had been spoken 
of by Mr. Milburn as due her in the way of musical per- 
fection. 

“Uncle,” Rhoda Holland said one day, “do put off that 
old hat. Aunt Vesta could love you so much better ! 
People think it is cruel, uncle. Oh, listen to your wife’s 
heart and not to your pride.” 

“ Stop !” said Milburn. “ One more reference to my 
honest hat and you shall be sent back to Sinepuxent and 
Mrs. Somers.” 

It may have been this dreadful threat, or rising ambi- 
tion, or the fascinations of Judge Custis’s position and at- 
tentions and remarkable gallantry, that disposed Rhoda 
to turn her worldly sagacity upon the father of her 
friend. 

The visit to Annapolis occupied the whole winter ; as 
it proceeded, Judge Custis, suppressing the temptations 
of the table, and feeling his later responsibilities thought- 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


552 

fully, and desirous of a fixed settlement in a home again, 
felt a powerful passion to possess Rhoda Holland. 

He contended against it in vain. Her beauty and co- 
quetry, and ambition, too, seized his fancy, and worked 
strongly upon his imagination. He had seen her grow 
from a forest rose to be the noblest flower of the gar- 
den, superb in health, rich in colors, tall and bright 
and warm, and easily aware of her conquests, and with 
a magical touch and encouragement. She began to 
lead him on from mere mischief. He was wise, and ob- 
servant of women, and he threw himself in the place of 
her instructor and courtier. She became his pupil, and 
an exacting one, driving his energies onward, demanding 
his full attention, stimulating his mind; and Vesta soon 
saw that her father was a blind captive in the cool yet 
self-fluttered meshes of her connection. 

“Is there any law, husband,” Vesta asked, “to prevent 
Rhoda marrying Judge Custis?” 

“I think not. There is no consanguinity. In a soci- 
ety where every degree of cousins marry together, it would 
be as gratuitous to interfere in such a marriage as to for- 
bid my hat by law.” 

“ He is so enamoured of her,” said Vesta, “ that I fear 
the results of her refusing him upon his habits. Father 
is a better man than he ever was : a wife that can retain 
his interest will now keep him steady all his life.” 

The adjournment of the Legislature was at hand ; an- 
other year, and perhaps years unforeseen in number, were 
to be occupied in the same slow, illusive quest. 

Judge Custis found himself one morning early above 
the dome of the old state-house, where he frequently 
went at that hour with Rhoda Holland, to look out 
upon the bay and the town and “ Severn’s silver wave 
reflected.” 

He turned to her with a sparkle of humor, yet a flush 
of the cheek, and said : 


THE JUDGE REMARRIED. 553 

“ My girl, what is to be your answer to Pastor Tilgh- 
man’s marriage offer?” 

“ It cannot be.” 

“ Then I am free to ask for another. Rhoda, you have 
seen that I am foolish for you. I was your admirer when 
you were a poor forest girl — ” 

“ And when you were a married man,” Rhoda inter- 
rupted. “ How splendid and sly you were ! But, even 
then, I was delighted that a great man like you could even 
flirt with me. Perhaps you will cut up the same way 
again ?” 

“ No, Rhoda. This is my last opportunity. I will de- 
vote to you my remaining life. I am fifty-five, but it is 
the best fifty-five in Maryland. You shall have the de- 
votion of twenty-five.” 

“ I want to be taken to Washington,” Rhoda said. “ I 
think I could marry an old man if he took me there.” 

“ I will run for Congress, then. You will make a great 
woman in public life. I do not ask you to love me, but 
to let me love you. Oh, my child, marriage has been a 
tragedy with me. I will be a repentant and a fond hus- 
band. Hear my selfishness speak and make the sacri- 
fice.” 

“ If I say ‘Yes,’ ” said Rhoda, “it is not to settle down 
and nurse you. You are to be what you have been this 
winter: a beau, and an ever fond and gallant gentle- 
man.” 

“ Yes, as long as time will let me.” 

“ Then say no more about it,” Rhoda answered, with a 
little pallor ; “ if the rest are willing, a poor girl like me 
will not refuse you, but say, like Ruth, ‘ Spread thy skirt 
over thine handmaid ; for thou art a near kinsman.’ I 
love your daughter.” 

Meshach Milburn, not more than half pleased with the 
turn affairs had taken, hastened to Princess Anne in ad- 
vance and sought William Tilghman. 


554 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


“ Dear friend,” he said, “ I hope your heart was not 
committed to my wayward niece ?” 

“ Has she engaged herself to another, Cousin Me- 
shach ?” 

“Yes, to Judge Custis. You know what a taking way 
he has with girls. It was not my match, William.” 

Milburn looked at the young man and beheld no dis- 
appointment on his face — rather a flush of spirit. 

“ Cousin Meshach,” he said, cheerfully, “ I thought I 
could make Rhoda happy ; I thought I interpreted her 
right. Since I was mistaken, it is better that she has 
been sincere. No, my heart is still a bachelor’s and a 
priest’s. See, cousin ! The bishop has sent for me to 
take a larger field.” 

He united Rhoda and the Judge, as he had married 
his fir&t love — to another ; she was pale and in tears ; he 
kissed her at the altar, and gave his hand to the Judge 
warmly : 

“ I know you will be a better Christian, Cousin Daniel. 
God has given you much love on the earth. Our prayers 
for you have been answered.” 

Vesta was disappointed, expecting to see William made 
happy in a marriage with Rhoda. 


Chapter XLVI. 

THE CURSE OF THE HAT. 

As the spring burst upon Princess Anne in cherry blos- 
soms and dogwood flowers, in herring and shad weighting 
the river seines, and broods of young chickens and peach- 
trees pullulating, and as the time of fruit and corn and 
early cantaloupe followed, the life in human veins also 
unfolded in infant fruit, and Vesta became a mother. 


THE CURSE OF THE HAT. 


555 

The forest and the court had harmonized in the off- 
spring, and the young boy took the name of Custis Mil- 
burn. 

Healthy and comely, as if Society had made the match 
for Nature, the infant flourished without a day’s ailing, 
and grew upon its parents’ eyes like a miracle, having 
the symmetry and loveliness of the mother, and the bold, 
challenging countenance of the father ; and to Meshach 
it brought the satisfaction of an improved posterity, and 
an heir to his success ; to Vesta, compensation for the 
loss of worldly society. 

She found more joy in Teackle Hall, with this won- 
drous product of her sacrifice and pain, than with the 
admiration of all the good families in Maryland; and a 
sense of warmth and gratitude sprang to her conscience 
towards the father of this matchless gift. 

“ I have not given him my whole loyalty,” she reflected, 
with exacting piety ; “ I have let trifles stand before my 
vows.” 

Accordingly, when Milburn, conscience-stricken, and 
accusing himself of hard conditions in exacting a marriage 
without love, came one day, with all the magnanimity of 
a new parent, before his wife to make some restitution, 
she surprised him by arising and kissing him. 

“Sir, I have been very proud and stubborn. Do for- 
give me !” 

He pressed her to his breast, while his tears ran over 
her face. 

“ Honey,” he said at length, “ what a mockery my crime 
to you has been — to think that you could ever love me ! 
No, I will give you freedom. Dear as your captivity is 
to me, your cage shall open and you shall fly.” 

Vesta stepped back at these strange words and waited 
for him to explain. He continued : 

“ I will send you to Italy with our child. Your father 
shall go, too, if you desire. Go from me and these urn 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


556 

loved conditions, this hateful bondage and constraint”— 
his tears flowed fast again, but he let them fall ungrudged, 
—“find in your music and your noble mind forgetful- 
ness of this unworthy marriage. I can live in the recol- 
lection of the blessing you have been to me.” 

“What!” said Vesta; “do you command me to leave 
you ?” 

“Yes. Let it be that. I know how conscientious you 
are, my darling, but it is your duty to go. A hard struggle 
is before me : I am deeply embarked in an untried busi- 
ness. Now I can spare the money. Go and find hap- 
piness in a happier land.” 

She went to him again and put her arms around him. 

“ Leave you ?” she said. “ What have I done to be 
driven away? How could I reconcile myself to let you 
live alone ? ‘ For better or for worse/ I said. God has 

made it better and better every day.” 

He held her head between his palms and looked into 
her eyes, to see if she spoke from the heart. 

“Husband,” she whispered, “I love you.” 
******* 

The minds of both husband and wife, after this recon- 
cilement, turned to the disturbing hat as the subject of 
their estrangement hitherto. 

Said Milburn to himself : “What a sinner I have been 
to distress that poor child with my miserable hat ! At 
the first opportunity she gives me, I will lay it aside for- 
ever.” 

Said Vesta to her father and his bride : “What a wicked 
heart I have kept, to oppose my husband in such a little 
thing as his good old hat — the badge of his reverence 
to his family and of his bravery to an impertinent age. I 
have let it discolor my married life and all the sunshine. 
But my baby has melted my obdurate heart. Come, unite 
with me, and let us show him that everything he wears 
we will adopt proudly.” 


THE CURSE OF THE HAT. 


557 

Therefore, when Milburn next went out, his wife came 
with a beaming face and elastic step and put on his head 
his steeple hat. He looked at her grimly, but she stopped 
his protest with a kiss. 

He thought to introduce the subject to Judge Custis, 
but that fond bridegroom broke in with : 

“ Milburn, you’re a game fellow. It was impudent in 
me to say one word about your hat. I’ll get one like it 
myself if I can find one. Tut, tut, man ! It becomes you. 
Say no more about it.” 

Milburn undertook to make the explanation to his 
niece, but before he could well begin she cried : 

“Uncle Meshach, Aunt Vesta is just in love with your 
hat ! She won’t hear of your wearing any other. We’re 
all going to stand by it, uncle.” 

A man chooses his own verdict by a long course of 
behavior ; austerity in the family begets fear ; an affecta- 
tion, whether of folly or resentment, is at last credited to 
nature ; man is seldom allowed to escape from the trap 
of his own temperament. 

So Meshach Milburn never obtained the opportunity 
to relieve himself from the affliction with which he had 
afflicted others. Like an impostor who has established 
the claim of deafness, and mankind bawls in his ear, the 
hatted spectre was made to feel uncomfortable when he 
put off his tile — his consistency was at once on trial. He 
was like a boy who had pricked a cross upon his hand in 
India ink, and, growing to be a man with taste and po- 
sition, sees the indelible advertisement of his vulgarity 
whenever he takes a human hand. 

To have put on any other hat would have subjected 
him to new hoots and comments, and made himself 
publicly smile at his own folly ; he must have climbed as 
high as the pillory to explain the change and make apol- 
ogy; the society he had faced in defiance seemed all at 
once united to refuse him a status without his Entailed 


558 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


Hat, and it would have taken the courage of throwing off a 
life-long alias and living under a forgotten name, to appear 
in Princess Anne in a new, contemporary head-dress. 

Milburn saw that he must wear his old hat for life; 
he bent under the servitude, and was alone the victim of 
it now. 


Chapter XLVII. 

FAILURE AND RESTITUTION. 

The railroad struggle was renewed from year to year. 

The Legislature was annually beset by strong lobby 
forces, and an embittered contest between the Potomac 
Canal and the greater railway company, to strangle each 
other, left the Eastern Shore railroad out of notice. Loco- 
motive engines of native invention began to appear ; the 
railroad to Washington was finally opened, and, next, to 
Harper’s Ferry, as Vesta’s boy became a young horse- 
man and learned to read. The venerable court-house at 
Princess Anne, with its eighty-seven years of memories, 
burned down during these proceedings, and a panic ex- 
tended over Patty Cannon’s old region at the whisper of 
another Nat Turner rebellion among the slaves ; but no 
mention of the thousands of abductions there was made 
in the anti-Masonic convention at Baltimore, where Samuel 
S. Seward and Thaddeus Stevens nominated Mr. Wirt for 
President, because one white man had been stolen. The 
murder of Jacob Cannon by Owen Daw did produce some 
distant comment a little later, chiefly because of the 
apathy of the Delaware society to pursue the murderer. 

By a long course of usury and legal persecution the 
Cannon brothers had become detested in their own com- 
munity, and when they sued O’Day, or Daw, for cutting 
down a bee-tree on one of their farms he had tilled, and 
then enforced the judgment of ten dollars, Daw, — now a 


FAILURE AND RESTITUTION. 


559 


man in growth and of Celtic vindictiveness, — loaded his 
gun and started for Cannon’s Ferry, and waylaid Jacob 
just as he was leading his horse off the ferry scow. 

“ Are you going to give me back that ten dollars, you 
old scoundrel ?” shouted O’Day. 

“ Stand back ! stand back !” answered long Jacob ; “ the 
quotient was correct ; the lex loci and the lex terrce were 
argued. The lex talionis — ” 

“ Take it !” cried the villain, adroitly firing his shot-gun 
into the merchant’s breast, so as not to injure his humaner 
beast. 

Jacob Cannon staggered to the fence at the head of 
the wharf, and caught there a moment, and fell dead. 

“You scoundrel,” screamed Isaac Cannon from the 
window, “ to kill my brother, my executive comfort.” 

“ Yes,” answered O’Day, “ and I’ll give the other barrel 
to you !” 

As Isaac Cannon barricaded himself in, Owen O’Day 
collected his effects without hurry, and betook himself to 
the wilds of Missouri. 

Cannon’s Ferry fell into decay when the railroad at 
Seaford carried off its trading importance, but there are 
yet to be seen the never tenanted mansion of the disap- 
pointed bridegroom, and the gravestones which show how 
Jacob’s fate frightened Isaac Cannon to a speedy tomb. 

In the meantime, John M. Clayton had made use of 
the fears of Calhoun and his nullifiers, who were men- 
aced with the penalties of treason by the president, to 
pass a great protective tariff bill by their aid, thus 
establishing the manufactures in the same period with 
the railways. 

This triumph in the senate left him free to conduct the 
suit of Randel against the Canal Company, which occu- 
pied as many years as the railroad enterprise of Meshach 
Milburn. 

The barbarous system of “ pleadings ” was then in full 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


56° 

vogue, though soon to be weeded out even in its parent 
England, and the law to be made a trial of facts instead 
of traverses, demurrers, avoidances, rebutters and surre- 
butters, churned out of the skim milk of words. Clayton’s 
pleadings require a bold, dull mind to read them now, 
but he tired his adversaries out, and his cousin, Chief- 
Justice Clayton, who was jealous of him, had yet to decide 
in his favor. 

Then, after the lapse of years, the issue came to trial at 
the old Dutch-English town of New Castle, and from the 
magnitude of the damages claimed, the weight and num- 
ber of counsel, and the novelty of trying a great corpora- 
tion, it interested the lawyers and burdened the news- 
papers, and was popularly supposed to belong to the class 
of French spoliation claims, or squaring-the-circle prob- 
lems — something that would be going on at the final 
end of the world. 

“ Never you mind, Bob Frame ! Walter Jones is a great 
advocate, but, Goy ! he don’t know a Delaware jury. I’ll 
get my country-seat, up here on the New Castle hills, out 
of this case,” Clayton said, as he pitched quoits with his 
fellow-lawyers from Washington and Philadelphia, on the 
green battery where the Philadelphia steamer came in 
with the Southern passengers for the little stone-silled 
railroad. 

John Randel, Jr., had ruined a fine engineer, to become 
a litigious man all his life. 

He sued his successor and fellow New-Yorker, Engineer 
Wright, and was nonsuited. He garnisheed the canal of- 
ficers, and beset the Legislature for remedial legislation, 
and threatened Clayton himself with damages ; yet had 
such a fund of experience and such vitality that he kept 
the outer public beaten up, like the driving of wild beasts 
into the circle of the hunters. He had surveyed the great 
city of New York and planned its streets above the new 
City Hall. Elevated railroads were his projection half a 


FAILURE AND RESTITUTION. 56 1 

century before they came about. He now looked upon 
engineering with indifference, and considered himself to 
have been born for the law. 

In the midst of many other duties, Clayton, in course 
of time, convicted Whitecar of kidnapping, on negro tes- 
timony, having obtained a ruling to that end from his 
cousin, the chief-justice ; and a constituent named Sorden 
(not the personage of our tale), being prosecuted for kid- 
napping, in order to spite Clayton, was cleared by him at 
Georgetown after a marvellous exhibition of jury elo- 
quence, and repaid the obligation, years after our story 
closes, by breaking a party dead-lock in the Legislature 
of Delaware, where he became a member, and sending 
Mr. Clayton for the fourth time to the American senate. 
******* 

The Entailed Hat became more common in the streets 
of Annapolis than it had been in Princess Anne, as Mil- 
burn pressed his bill for assistance year after year, and 
was shot through the back with slanders from home and 
hustled in front by overwhelming opposition. 

Judge Custis took the field for Congress on the railroad 
issue, and was elected, through the Forest vote, and his 
wife went through a Washington season with as much 
dignity as enjoyment, few suspecting that she was not the 
Judge’s social equal. 

The ancestral hat defied all worldly hostility, but be- 
came the iron helmet to bend its wearer’s back. He 
prayed in secret for some pitying angel to break the spell 
that bound him to it, but none conceived that he would 
let it go. 

His boy grew strong, and took his father’s dress to be 
a matter of course ; his wife pressed upon him the nause- 
ous ornament he had so long affected ; a wide conspiracy 
seemed to have been formed to drive his head into that 
hereditary wigwam, and he could not escape it. 

Even Grandmother Tilghman,who now was an inmate 

36 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


562 

of Teackle Hall, in William’s absence of years, forgot all 
about the queer hat, and rejoiced to herself that “ Bill ” 
had not married “ that political girl.” 

Milburn had maintained his financial solvency by turns 
and sorties that even his enemies admired, but a railroad 
built along one man’s spine and terminated by a steeple 
depot on his head must wear out the unrelieved individual 
at last. 

The banks in Baltimore began to break ; fierce riots 
ensued ; the state debt had mounted up, through aid to 
public works, to fifteen million dollars; the Eastern Shore 
Railroad obtained, too late, the vote of the subsidy expect- 
ed, and the state treasurer could not find funds to pay it. 

The gazettes announced the failure of Meshach Mil- 
burn, Esq., of the Eastern Shore. 

Without an instant’s hesitation, Vesta surrendered her 
own property, and she and Rhoda Custis opened a select 
school in a part of Teackle Hall, and let the remainder 
for residences. 

“ Why do you make this sacrifice?” asked her husband ; 
“ nobody expected it.” 

“ They may say we were married to protect my parents,” 
Vesta answered, “ but not that it was to secure myself. My 
boy shall have a clear name.” 

His failure ended the active life of Meshach Milburn ; 
too considerate of his family to renew his former low en- 
deavors, he became a clerk in the county offices, through 
Judge Custis’s influence, and wore his hat to stipendiary 
labor with the regularity, but not the rebellious instincts, 
of old days, becoming, instead, the victim of a certain re- 
ligious trance or apathy, which deepened with time. 

Vesta saw that Milburn’s misfortune extinguished the 
last remnant of animosity in her father’s mind, and the 
two men went about together, like two old boys who had 
both been prisoners of war, and were cured of ambition. 

Milburn resumed his forest walks and bird-tamings, all 


FAILURE AND RESTITUTION. 563 

traces of ambition left his countenance, and he was as 
dead to business things as if he had never risen above 
his forest origin. 

He often talked of William Tilghman, and seemed to 
wish to see him, though for no apparent purpose. 

The Asiatic cholera, having begun to make annual vis- 
its to the United States, singled out, one day, the wearer 
of the obsolete hat, and put to the sternest test of affec- 
tion and humanity the household at Teackle Hall. 

Whether from the respect his steady purposes had 
given them, or the natural devotion in a sequestered soci- 
ety, no soul left his side. 

But it brought the final visitation of poverty upon Vesta. 
Her school was broken up in a day. She dismissed it 
herself, and calmly sat by her husband’s bed, to soothe 
his dying weakness, and await the providence of God. 

He rapidly passed through the stages of cramp and 
collapse, a nearly perished pulse, and the cadaverous 
look of one already dead, yet his intellect, by the law of 
the disease, lived unimpaired. 

“ The stream cannot rise above the fountain,” he spoke, 
huskily; “all we can get from life is love. My darling, 
you have showered it on me, and been thirsty all your 
days.” 

“I have been happy in my duty,” Vesta said ; “you 
- have been kind to me always. We have nothing to re- 
gret.” 

He wandered a little, though he looked at her, and 
seemed thinking of his mother. 

“ Where can we go ?” he muttered, pitifully ; “ I burned 
the dear old hut down. It would have been a roof for 
my boy.” 

His chin trembled, as if he were about to cry, and sighed : 

“Fader an’ mammy’s quarrelled; the mocking-bird 
won’t sing. Ride for the doctor ! ride hard ! Oh ! oh 1 
too late, little chillen ! They’se both dead 1” 


5 6 4 


THE ENTAILED HAT. 


He returned to perfect knowledge in a moment, a 
fixed his eyes on Vesta, saying, 

“ I leave you poor. I tried hard. Perhaps — ” 

His eye was here arrested by some conflict at the do< 
where Aunt Hominy, notwithstanding her imperfect wi 
was striving to keep guard. 

“ De debbil’s measurin’ him in ! Measurin’ him in 
las’ !” the old woman said ; “ Miss Vessy’s ’mos’ free !’ 

“ Admit me !” spoke a clear, familiar voice, “ I mu' 
see him. Mr. Clayton has won the lawsuit, and two hun 
dred and twenty-six thousand dollars damages ! Cousii 
Meshach is rich again.” 

“That friendly voice,” spoke Meshach, with a happ) 
light in his eyes ; “ oh, I wanted to hear it again !” 

Yet he put his hand up with all his little strength tc 
push away the intruder, who would have kissed him, and 
whispered, 

“ No. The cholera !” 

“ It’s the bishop, uncle !” cried Mrs. Custis ; “ Bishop 
Tilghman, from the West.” 

“ Don’t I know him,” Milburn whispered, with sinking 
voice and powers. “ Honest man ! Bishop of our church ! 
Bishop in the free West ! God bless him !” 

He was lost again, as if he had fainted, for some time, 
and, all kneeling, the young bishop made a prayer. 

When they arose Milburn seemed speechless, yet he 
tried to raise his hand, and, Vesta coming to his aid, his 
long, lean fingers closed around and he signalled to 
William Tilghman with his eyes. 

The bishop came near, and, by a painful effort, Mil- 
burn put his wife’s hand in her cousin’s. His lips framed 
a word without a sound : 

“ Restitution 

“Glory to God!” suddenly exclaimed Grandmothei 
Tilghman, who seemed to see without sight all that was 
going on. 


FAILURE AND RESTITUTION. 565 

“ I knew it would be so, if both would wait,” sighed 
Rhoda to her husband, through her tears. 

There was still something on Milburn’s mind, though 
he was unable to explain it. Every attempt was made 
to interpret his want, but in vain, till Aunt Hominy broke 
the silence by mumbling : 

“ He want dat debbiPs hat !” 

Vesta saw her husband’s eyes twinkle as if he had 
heard the word, and it gave her a thought. She left the 
room, and returned with her boy, a fine young fellow, 
obedient to her wish. In his hand was his father’s hat. 

“ What will you do if papa leaves us, Custis ?” Vesta 
spoke, loudly, so that the dying man could hear. 

“ I will wear my forefather’s hat, papa !” said the child. 

The dying man drooped his eyes, as if to say “No,” 
and looked fervently at his son and wearily at the old 
headpiece. 

Vesta placed it on his pillow, and waited to know his 
next wish. 

He made a sign, which they interpreted to mean, 

“ Lift me !” 

He was lifted up, livid as the dead, and raised his eyes 
towards his forehead. 

His wife set the Entailed Hat upon his temples. 

“ Bury it !” he said, in a distinct whisper* and passed 
away. 


THE END. 













































• . r, 



































































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